The Marijuana Laws are Failing

For as long as I have been passionate about legalizing marijuana I have always heard the argument that the government will never legalize pot because they make too much money fining people for possesion. I have always been skeptical about that claim because it doesn't seem plausible that the government could be making that much money from pot growth. I read an article that was written almost a year ago that backs up my opinion and shows that the government can make more money legalizing it than they have been with the plant being illegal. It is an article on ABCnews.com written by Nitya Venkataraman called Marijuana Called Top U.S. Cash Crop. She explains how marjiuana was ranked as the top cash crop in the United States. The production of marijuana is valued at $38.5 billion which is higher than the combined value of corn ($23.3 billion) and wheat ($7.5 billion). I was thrilled to learn this because it means that more people are smoking weed than I thought. It means that the there is a solid reason why the government should legalize marijuana, to make money. Could you imagine how much money the government would make if they taxed marijuana? We all know that the greatest incentive for the government is money. A quote out of Venkataraman's article puts it into perspective for the government, "A 2005 analysis by Harvard visiting professor Jeffrey Miron estimates that if the United States legalized marijuana, the country would save $7.7 billion in law enforcement costs and could generated as much as $6.2 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like alcohol or tobacco." So to all the people who said marijuana will never be legal because the government makes too much money illegalizing it, you are wrong because marijuana, as the leading cash crop, can lead the government to greater amounts of money if they only legalize it.