{"id":1982,"date":"2020-09-09T11:48:15","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T18:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=1982"},"modified":"2020-09-09T12:25:07","modified_gmt":"2020-09-09T19:25:07","slug":"the-cost-of-legalized-pot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=1982","title":{"rendered":"The Cost of Legalized Pot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Seven people were found shot to death Monday at an illegal marijuana grow in the small rural town of Aguanga, California.\u00a0 The Associated Press <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxla.com\/news\/7-shot-to-death-at-illegal-marijuana-grow-in-aguanga\">reports<\/a> that police responded to a call reporting\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 Officers found over 1,000 pounds of processed marijuana and several hundred plants.\u00a0 In February police arrested four people in the same community and seized nearly 10,000 plants and 400 pounds of pot. \u00a0 After recreational marijuana became legal in 2018, illegal grows have actually increased in the state.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 When the initiative to legalize marijuana qualified for the California ballot,\u00a0 proponents raised and spent nearly $16 million for television and radio advertising promising that legalization would;\u00a0 generate up to $1 billion in annual tax revenue and decrease law enforcement costs,\u00a0 provide an environment where marijuana was safe, controlled and taxed, and decrease black market and drug cartel activity.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>Now, two years after legalization, the tax <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ais-cpa.com\/deep-dive-recreational-marijuana-tax-revenue-in-the-united-states\/\">revenue<\/a> from legal pot is about half of the $1 billion promised by proponents, and the Orange County Register <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/2020\/03\/10\/california-passes-1-billion-in-cannabis-tax-revenue-two-years-after-launching-legal-market\/\">reports<\/a> that illegal marijuana makes up about 75% of all purchases of the drug.\u00a0 Obviously the promises made by legalization proponents were false.\u00a0 Commenting on the violence associated with illegal grows,\u00a0 an official of a cannabis industry group said, &#8220;The risk is inherent in the underground market&#8230;.When you have money and high returns, people want to take that from you.&#8221;\u00a0 He noted that large grows typically have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product, making them an attractive target for criminals.\u00a0 Criminals such as the thousands of repeat felons granted early release from California jails and prisons over the past decade.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seven people were found shot to death Monday at an illegal marijuana grow in the small rural town of Aguanga, California.\u00a0 The Associated Press reports that police responded to a call reporting\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 Officers found over 1,000 pounds of processed marijuana and several hundred plants.\u00a0 In February police arrested four people in the same community and seized nearly 10,000 plants and 400 pounds of pot. \u00a0 After recreational marijuana became legal in 2018, illegal grows have actually increased in the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-scan"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Cost of Legalized Pot - Crime &amp; 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