Hundreds line up yesterday at the legal dispensaries in Illinois to buy legal pot. The media made it a feel-good story interviewing people from 21 to 65 buying hundreds of dollars of various products for cash with a big chunk going to taxes. This so thousands of retired public employees can bask on the beach in Florida with millions in pensions that are impossible to get in the private sector.
Ignoring the future implications of this. Job losses, marriage break-ups, lethal traffic accidents, muggings and robberies at cash-rich dispensaries, violence, etc. As the state introduces hundreds of new users to a product they were not inclined to buy on the street with possible jail time. And, as other states have found, the illegal sellers don’t give up customers easily. Now that they can peddle a legal product with a big tax cost built-in, they will be cutting prices on their Mexican pot to new users. The governor commuted sentences for 11,000 inmates with marijuana convictions. Some might be on the street packing today.
And, one year from now the tax revenue from this will be gone as the retired pensioners get their 3% increase and hundreds more retire and require their first $100,000 a year pension payments. Illinois has hit the wall on funding these pensions. Taxpayers are leaving in droves. The more they raise taxes the fewer net tax dollars they raise. Some of the first to go are those public employees getting those pensions. Florida has no income tax. The state is maxed out on borrowing. So, the solutions now are more casinos, legal pot, sports betting, etc. The sinners are down to sin taxes.
