Pennsylvania undoubtedly has forfeited hundreds of millions of dollars in state tax revenue by declining to join 18 other states that have legalized and regulated the adult use of marijuana.
But the idea has enough momentum that the state Senate has begun hearings on legalization as proposed in a bipartisan bill.
Being late to this game might be a good thing. Unrealized state revenue is the price of letting other states provide the experience that Pennsylvania can use to make the transition.
From economics to criminal justice, there are myriad sound arguments for legalization. It would enable law enforcement to focus on more serious crime while ending disproportionate enforcement affecting minority communities. Republican state Sen. Mike Regan, of Cumberland County, a former U.S. marshal, has sponsored the legalization bill primarily to undercut criminal distribution.
Former Auditor General Eugene DePasquale estimated in 2018 that legalized pot, taxed at 35%, would produce $581 million a year in state tax revenue. He estimated that 8.38% of Pennsylvania adults already use pot at least monthly — nearly 800,000 people. If each of those adults were to spend the average of $2,800 a year that legal pot smokers each spend in Colorado, the Pennsylvania industry would have about $1.66 billion a year in sales.
Meanwhile, a recent Franklin & Marshall poll found that support statewide for legalized pot has grown to more than 60%.
But the rollout of legal pot in other states has been anything but seamless. New Jersey’s legislature legalized it more than a year ago but the government has not devised a regulatory structure to govern distribution. In California and Illinois, the 40% state tax rate has made legal cannabis expensive and has spawned a thriving black market — defeating the objective of thwarting criminal distribution. Several states have experienced increases in impaired driving.
Perhaps the biggest impediment lies in Washington, D.C. The federal government still lists marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, in the same class as heroin, which always has been ridiculous.
Hearings in Harrisburg have been helpful in beginning to shape a safe and rational framework for legal pot, but Congress should act to eliminate the whiff of illegality from a substance with clear medical benefits and validation from a growing number of states.
— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre (TNS)
