Drugs #1: Why Pot Won't Be a Tax Cash Cow

One argument for legalizing pot is that it could then be sold like cigarettes and the tax revenue from those sales will be significant. To which I say, "What have you been smoking?"

1) There are millions of cigarette smokers, many smoking more than a pack a day, and cigarettes are addictive in a way that pot is not. I do not know what the stats are, but most pot smokers do not consume a large number of joints a week, not even the regular users.

2) To reap significant revenues would then require high prices and high taxes, but that in and of itself would reduce usage, or promote continued black market activity.

3) Although it is not convenient for the typical smoker to grow and roll his own cigarettes to feed his habit, such is not the case with pot users. Although most currently are more likely to buy their pot on the black market, literally anyone can grow it and use their own. Make pot legal and the current disincentive of illegality to grow your own disappears.

4) Since a black market already exists, and since drug cartels already provide for users, legalizing pot to be taxed like any other commodity simply makes it easier for those who are already selling it to do so unimpeded. The suggestion that the corner market, with it's overhead and necessary tax bookkeeping, will be able to compete with an existing black market which deals in cash and takes in no taxes at all, is likely untenable.

There are additional reasons for why tax revenue from pot sales will not add up to the values anticipated by proponents of the idea, but I think the above is enough to make anyone understand that it isn't going to be quite so simple as "legalize and tax."