Legalizing Marijuana in Illinois: Economic Common Sense

Legalizing Marijuana in Illinois: Economic Common Sense

Michael Heaton

Eastern Gateway Community College

Legalizing Marijuana in Illinois: Economic Common Sense

State of the State.

While planning and thinking about this project in the early days of June 2017, the State of Illinois had gone two years without a budget.  The democratically controlled Senate and  House of Representatives and the Republican Governor of the state could not agree on how to balance the budget. The budget impasse has left the state with more than 15 billion in unpaid bills and is close to having a junk credit rating. A recent Cable News Network Money article gave the State of Illinois the inauspicious title of the most messed up state in the country. The article pointed out that the state's lack of a budget hurt those who could least afford it, the vulnerable of our society. Illinois social services such as Meals on Wheels for homebound seniors, mental health services, domestic violence support centers and homeless shelters that relied on state funding had to close because of a lack of available funding (Egan, 2017). Because of the budget impasse, the neighboring cities of  Champaign and Urbana lost all existing shelters for the homeless population of the area. Had it not been for the local faith communities opening their doors, it would have been a brutal winter on the homeless.

  The good news is that after two years of unpaid bills, lawmakers in Illinois have finally managed to pass a budget — which was then promptly vetoed by the governor.  The new budget came with an unpopular income tax hike that the governor adamantly opposed. The new tax hike will raise an estimated five billion in revenue for the state and help it begin to pay the back log of bills (Domonoske, 2017). The governor’s veto was quickly overturned by both the Senate and House leaving many people in the state wondering what happens next. The state needs to raise incoming revenue without increasing current taxes, and one solution would be to legalize and tax an already existing black market marijuana industry.  

In 2016 Gallup released a poll that showed an all time high for the support of legalization of marijuana with sixty percent of the country in favor of it. The results of the survey showed an increase in support across all age and political groups. The largest increase is among Republicans with a 42 percent increase from a decade ago (Swift, 2016). Illinois should follow the example of eight other states and the District of Columbia and legalize the recreational use of marijuana. With widespread support, the state could capitalize on the estimated one billion in taxes which qould pay for a lot of children's text books and lunches.

Twenty-five states have either decriminalized or legalized marijuana, showing that for the most part, the war on this drug is slowly coming to a cease fire. For economic gain, legalization and regulation are the only real choice that any state has. A case in point is that in 2015 the state of Colorado collected more than $135 million in taxes, while recent projections estimate that California will collect close to three billion in tax revenue (Krishna, 2017). With the population of Illinois a third of  California, simple math shows that receiving a  billion dollars in tax revenue is possible. That is just the tax on the product sales and does not include gains from new businesses that will increase employment and income tax revenue.

The war on marijuana.

In spite of the fact that the vast majority of the population favor legalization and the proven success in pro-marijuana states of control and regulation,  marijuana is still illegal. The main reason is the so called “war on drugs.” The United States “war on drugs” has utilized several tactics over the past several decades in an attempt to the eliminate the use of recreational drugs such as informational attacks aimed at educating the public on the dangers of recreational drug consumption. These campaigns have many critics who claim that the campaigns are more often than not misleading or out and out lies and the best reason to end the war. Drugs that are outlawed by society, as is the case for marijuana, are deemed as unfit for recreational use for social, religious, medical or political reasons even if the majority favor its use as was the case with alcohol during prohibition. The legal position of marijuana shifts from country to country, while the United States exerts a vast amount of influence on other countries and how their governments choose to battle the war on marijuana. Around the world,  the fight for legalization of marijuana varies in form and degree. From making it completely illegal to use at all, to some nations allowing certain amounts for personal use while others have just chosen to decriminalize it all together (H.W. Wilson Company,2014). And those countries that have decided to make marijuana illegal have only helped the drug cartels and lost countless amounts of taxable income in the process.