The Cost of Legalized Pot

Seven people were found shot to death Monday at an illegal marijuana grow in the small rural town of Aguanga, California.  The Associated Press reports that police responded to a call reporting  gunshots at a home in the one stop-sign town, and found a woman suffering from gunshot wounds, who later died, and six other victims who were dead.   Officers found over 1,000 pounds of processed marijuana and several hundred plants.  In February police arrested four people in the same community and seized nearly 10,000 plants and 400 pounds of pot.   After recreational marijuana became legal in 2018, illegal grows have actually increased in the state.

The reason for this is that regulated pot is heavily taxed, making it 30-70% more expensive than illegal pot which remains easy to obtain.  When the initiative to legalize marijuana qualified for the California ballot,  proponents raised and spent nearly $16 million for television and radio advertising promising that legalization would;  generate up to $1 billion in annual tax revenue and decrease law enforcement costs,  provide an environment where marijuana was safe, controlled and taxed, and decrease black market and drug cartel activity.   Supporters included, then Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, and Senator Bernie Sanders, the state Democrat party, the ACLU, the NAACP and several unions and pro-marijuana organizations.  The initiative was opposed by virtually every law enforcement organization in California, Senator Diane Feinstein, the state Republican party and dozens of mayors, boards of supervisors, police chiefs, sheriffs and district attorneys.

Now, two years after legalization, the tax revenue from legal pot is about half of the $1 billion promised by proponents, and the Orange County Register reports that illegal marijuana makes up about 75% of all purchases of the drug.  Obviously the promises made by legalization proponents were false.  Commenting on the violence associated with illegal grows,  an official of a cannabis industry group said, “The risk is inherent in the underground market….When you have money and high returns, people want to take that from you.”  He noted that large grows typically have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product, making them an attractive target for criminals.  Criminals such as the thousands of repeat felons granted early release from California jails and prisons over the past decade.  The fact that California has reduced the trafficking of most drugs to a misdemeanor, has left the state wide open to illegal sales and the violence that comes with the territory.