Marijuana taxes undo gains made from legalization and are insufficient to fund programs

Conclusion In order to eliminate the war on drugs, California legalized the use of both medical and recreational marijuana. Propositions 215 and 64 allowed the government to tax and regulate marijuana to generate revenue for the state. Also, law enforcement was able to focus on priorities by ending the arrests of non-violent marijuana users, saving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars a year and allowing police to focus on violent crimes. However, these are just on paper since there are limitations to policies relating to taxation and crime. Citizens are obligated to follow the current policy of marijuana usage. High excise taxes might have allowed the state to focus on addressing public order and safety issues. Yet, there are no clear indicators of whether crime rates in California have increased or decreased. Marijuana legalization is supposed to reduce crime rates; however, the reality can be more complicated. On the one hand, there are claims that marijuana legalization led to rising crime rates from the time it was legalized while there is no absolute increase in both violent and nonviolent crime rates on the other hand. The only truth here is that marijuana legalization does affect the justice system. Even so, the taxes imposed on growers and cultivators down to consumers must be debated further. Taxation, while it is considered as the biggest vantage point in legalized marijuana, also remains a limiting factor that may eventually affect the state’s estimation and actual generation of profit. Questions remain about how much states legalizing marijuana can earn, considering the volatility of the marijuana market and the presence of the black market. When this happens, there would not be enough marijuana tax fund to cover public safety issues. Again, there is a need to look into marijuana legalization in California from a holistic perspective.