Starting today, it is legal to smoke marijuana in Washington State. That got me thinking: Could taxing stoners help balance state budgets?
The answer is yes, but it wouldn’t help much. One 2010 study, done for the libertarian CATO Institute, figures legalizing and taxing weed would increase state tax revenues by about $9 billion a year and reduce spending on enforcement by about the same amount. Overall, legalizing pot would both reduce spending and raise tax revenue by about 0.5 percent, according to the authors, Jeffrey Miron and Katherine Waldock.
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