Cato: Drug Legalization -- a Windfall for State Budgets

[Matt Collins]

Drug Legalization -- a Windfall for State Budgets
by Katherine Waldock

Katherine Waldock is co-author of the new Cato study "The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition"


Added to cato.org on September 30, 2010



This article appeared on The Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/) on September 29, 2010.



SOURCE:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12185&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CatoRecentOpeds+%28Cato+Recen t+Op-eds%29

[dannno]

For California, we estimate that the legalization of marijuana will lead to $960 million in savings on enforcement and $352 million in additional tax revenue. To put things into perspective, California faces a $19.9 billion budget deficit for 2010-2011.

If marijuana is legalized across the nation, we predict $8.7 billion in law enforcement savings and $8.7 billion in tax revenue. If all drugs are legalized, the savings figure becomes $46.7 billion and the revenue $41.3 billion. A budgetary benefit of $88 billion per year is not chump change, especially given the current state of the economy.


hmmmmmmmmm