The Marijuana Thread...

boozeman

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Pot buyers add more than $1M to Colorado tax coffers


Kerry Sanders NBC News

3 hours ago



DENVER — In the first month of legal recreational marijuana sales in Colorado, retailers who shared their proprietary data with NBC News say they have collected $1.24 million in tax revenue.

Half of the state’s 35 licensed recreational retailers participated in the NBC News survey. The 18 retailers shared the first 27 days of their tax data because they say they believe it will help their image.

In the first month of operation, sellers of recreational marijuana are doing brisk business in Colorado. One seller said she averages about $20,000 a day in sales.
NBC News

In the first month of operation, sellers of recreational marijuana are doing brisk business in Colorado. One seller said she averages about $20,000 a day in sales.

In several cases, some of those sharing data had only sold recreational pot for four days due to complications with obtaining their state and local licenses.

In a back-of-the-napkin calculation, those who shared the data say they figure February’s tax collections in Colorado likely will exceed a quarter of a million dollars a day, putting it on pace to near $100 million annually.

When Colorado first considered legalizing recreational marijuana, it was estimated the first year’s tax take would be $67 million.

By comparison, Colorado took in about $39.9 million in sales, use and excise taxes from alcoholic beverages in fiscal 2013, according to the state Department of Revenue. Cigarettes generated $165.5 million in taxes, and tobacco products $31.6 million in the same fiscal year, July 1, 2012-June 30, 2013.

Toni Fox, owner of 3D Cannabis in Denver, says she could double her average daily sales of $20,000, but there isn't enough marijuana available.

“Elected officials around the country are watching what’s happening in Colorado and they're recognizing that there's a better way to handle marijuana,” said Mason Tvert, director of communications for Marijuana Policy Project, which advocates for legally regulated marijuana. “And by regulating its sale and having taxes paid on it, it’s a much more sensible approach.”

Tvert believes the so-called “Colorado experiment” will be even more impressive in the coming months because, “obviously this is just the first month of sales and only a fraction of the businesses that are expected to be open are currently operating.”

Taxes paid for pot transactions in Colorado vary depending on the municipality where it’s sold.

All sales are assessed the standard state sales tax of 2.9 percent, plus there’s a special state sales and excise tax, and there’s also an extra local sales and excise tax in many cities.

In Denver, those taxes add up to nearly 29 percent.

But that’s not stopping customers.

At 3D Cannabis recently, Toni Fox had to close because she had run out of product. Despite a big “closed” sandwich board on the steps to her storefront, there was a steady stream of would-be customers knocking on the door.

Fox says when she’s open, she’s averaging about $20,000 a day in sales.

Eva Honingford-Woolheiser, co-owner of Northern Lights Cannabis in Edgewater, Colo., says the tax revenue from marijuana will mean "really nice schools, really nice roads and really nice bridges."

“We could double that if we had enough inventory, but currently there’s an inventory shortage so we’re capping our sales.”

In Colorado, voters approved recreational marijuana sales with the promise that the first $40 million in tax revenue would go toward building schools.

After hearing about the early tax revenue figures gathered by NBC News, one shop owner in Edgewater sounded impressed.

“Wow, we’re going to have really nice schools, really nice roads and really nice bridges,” said Eva Honingford-Woolheiser, co-owner of Northern Lights Cannabis just outside Denver.

It’s those municipal projects made possible with marijuana tax money that has legislators in various states watching closely.

In Rhode Island, where there is a $100 million state budget deficit, state Sen. Joshua Miller has proposed legislation to change marijuana laws similar to what Colorado voters did.

“The kind of money that could be generated through this is an amount that could take care of more than 20 percent of the deficit that we’re running every year,” he said. “So it’s a very important revenue source potentially.”

Miller believes legal pot sales could generate $20 million or more a year. And he says it would also cut back on the government costs of running jails and prisons because legal sales would reduce arrests and incarcerations.

Critics of the legalization movement say the tax revenues appear seductive until the costs of pot addiction are calculated.
 

Clay_Allison

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Critics of the legalization movement say the tax revenues appear seductive until the costs of pot addiction are calculated.
:lol Pot addiction.
 

Cotton

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:lol Pot addiction.
That's the single most retarded argument out there against the legalization of pot. It's either ignorant or pretentious. Either way, it is a stupid argument.
 

boozeman

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That's the single most retarded argument out there against the legalization of pot. It's either ignorant or pretentious. Either way, it is a stupid argument.
Oh yeah, smart guy?

How about THIS?

Huh? Whaddaya think about that? S'matter, cat got your tongue?

Yeah.

Thought so.
 

E_D_Guapo

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:lol Pot addiction.
:lol

Yeah, just wait until we have to pay the piper! Billions upon billions will have to be spent to care for the debilitating effects of a nation of pot addicts!

Lookit, I'm not going to say that marijuana doesn't cause some problems or that some people aren't dependent on it, but it isn't the kind of gripping, life-threatening addiction of harder drugs. I have known people who have trouble sleeping if they run out. I've also known people who experience the very serious condition of being "totally bummed" when they have no weed. :art

There is a lot of fear-based ignorance out there by people who have no idea what they are talking about. Nothing new in that.
 

Cotton

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Oh yeah, smart guy?

How about THIS?

Huh? Whaddaya think about that? S'matter, cat got your tongue?

Yeah.

Thought so.
Sounds like doctors who couldn't come up with anything so they had to peg something and the dope was the easiest target.
 

BipolarFuk

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Late last week, a plague of pot propaganda began spreading across the Internet, claiming that a 31-year-old mother of two by the name of Gemma Moss died from an apparent marijuana overdose.

Reports from The Telegraph indicate that Moss was found dead in October of last year after smoking half a joint to ease her insomnia. A medical examination conducted by Dr. Kudair Hussein was said to uncover no abnormalities in her vital organs, only moderate to heavy levels of marijuana in her blood stream -- suggesting that cannabis toxicity was the cause of her death, which is exactly how it was recorded with the coroner.

"I looked through literature and it's well known that cannabis is of very low toxicity,” said Dr. Hussein. "But there are reports which say cannabis can be considered as a cause of death because it can induce a cardiac arrest."

Now, while none of us here at HIGH TIMES holds a medical degree, we must tell you; we have never heard of anyone dying from a marijuana overdose… not even close. Sure, we’ve smoked with our fair share of amateurs that will grip their chest, complain they cannot breathe, and in some situations, even proclaim at the top of their lungs that they are in fact going to die. Nevertheless, aside from a handful of these freak outbursts, no one we have ever known has gone down for anything more than a nap after smoking too much marijuana.

But don’t take our word for it. There is a plethora of research available that suggests death from a marijuana overdose is impossible. The most recent being from a study published in the journal Science, in which researchers discovered that when the brain is consumed by high levels of THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana, it produces an abundance of pregnenolone, preventing the effects of the drug from getting too intense. Meaning, a person can only get so high before the body starts blocking the buzz.

Interestingly, a report published in a 2006 edition of American Scientist, entitled “The Toxicity of Recreational Drugs,” is consistent with recent studies. The report finds that for a person to sustain a fatal marijuana overdose, they would have to consume over 1,000 times the effective dose. To put that into perspective, an individual would only need to drink 10 times more than the effective amount of alcohol to kill them.

Most researchers agree that marijuana users are not physically capable of consuming deadly amounts of the herb, which is the reason there have not been any reported marijuana deaths throughout history… that is until Gemma Moss.

However, many medical experts argue that Moss’ cause of death is extremely questionable, to say the least.

“There’s been no history of any verified reports of a death from cannabis ever, in 5,000 years of history,” said Dr. Alan Shackelford in a recent interview with The Cannabist. “Cannabis can cause an increased heart rate, and there’s a possibility that it could cause a problem with someone with a pre-existing heart disease -- for example, somebody with an elevated heart rate. But there’s no known dose of cannabis that could kill a human.”

Dr. Shacklefield, who is the physician responsible for evaluating patients for medical marijuana at Amarimed of Colorado, says that while he has no clue what killed Gemma Moss, he is “near 100-percent certainty that it wasn’t cannabis that killed her.”

Even the federal government, who appears hell-bent on maintaining marijuana’s Schedule II dangerous substance classification, does not believe marijuana is capable of killing. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has stated in the past that it is not very likely that a person could overdose and die from marijuana.

Incidentally, upon further investigation, authorities found reason to believe that Gemma Moss may have been taking various prescription drugs to combat her depression. Yet, there is no reported evidence to prove Moss was taking these medications at the time of her death.
 

boozeman

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Fatal car crashes involving pot use have tripled in U.S., study finds

Healthday // Healthday.

Researchers note that increase included men and women, and all age groups.

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- The legalization of marijuana is an idea that is gaining momentum in the United States, but there may be a dark side to pot becoming more commonplace, a new study suggests.

Fatal crashes involving marijuana use tripled during the previous decade, fueling some of the overall increase in drugged-driving traffic deaths, researchers from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health report.

"Currently, one of nine drivers involved in fatal crashes would test positive for marijuana," said co-author Dr. Guohua Li, director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia. "If this trend continues, in five or six years non-alcohol drugs will overtake alcohol to become the most common substance involved in deaths related to impaired driving."

The research team drew its conclusions from crash statistics from six states that routinely perform toxicology tests on drivers involved in fatal car wrecks -- California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and West Virginia. The statistics included more than 23,500 drivers who died within one hour of a crash between 1999 and 2010.

Alcohol contributed to about the same percentage of traffic fatalities throughout the decade, about 40 percent, Li said.

But drugs played an increasingly prevalent role in fatal crashes, the researchers found. Drugged driving accounted for more than 28 percent of traffic deaths in 2010, up from more than 16 percent in 1999.

Marijuana proved to be the main drug involved in the increase, contributing to 12 percent of 2010 crashes compared with 4 percent in 1999.

The study authors also noted that the combined use of alcohol and marijuana dramatically increases a driver's risk of death.

"If a driver is under the influence of alcohol, their risk of a fatal crash is 13 times higher than the risk of the driver who is not under the influence of alcohol," Li said. "But if the driver is under the influence of both alcohol and marijuana, their risk increases to 24 times that of a sober person."

The researchers found that the increase in marijuana use occurred across all age groups and in both sexes. Their findings were published online Jan. 29 in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Marijuana impairs driving in much the same way that alcohol does, explained Jonathan Adkins, deputy executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. It impairs judgment, affects vision and makes a person more distractible and more likely to take risks while driving.

"This study shows an alarming increase in driving under the influence of drugs and, in particular, it shows an increase in driving under the influence of both alcohol and drugs," said Jan Withers, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

"MADD is concerned anytime we hear about an increase in impaired driving, since it's 100 percent preventable," Withers added. "When it comes to drugged driving versus drunk driving, the substances may be different but the consequences are the same -- needless deaths and injuries."

The movement toward marijuana legalization makes the findings of this study incredibly important to traffic safety officials, Adkins noted.

"It's a wake-up call for us in highway safety," Adkins said. "The legalization of pot is going to spread to other states. It's not even a partisan issue at this point. Our expectation is this will become the norm rather than the rarity."

The problem is, marijuana and drug use before driving does not have the same stigma surrounding it as drunk driving has gained over the years, he added.

"The public knows about drunk driving, but I don't think they have awareness of drugged driving, so this is a huge issue," Adkins said. "We need to alert the public that if you've used any type of substance, you should not get behind the wheel. We need to create that culture where, like drunk driving, it is not acceptable."

Police also do not have a test as accurate and convenient as the breathalyzer for checking a driver's marijuana intoxication during a traffic stop, Li said.

A test is available that uses a driver's saliva to check cannabis levels, but it's not as reliable and accurate as the Breathalyzer, and has not been widely adopted by the police, he said.

"In the case of marijuana, I would say in maybe five years or more you will see some testing method or technique that may not as accurate as the breathalyzer, but is more accurate than the testing devices we have today," Li said.
---------------------------

About the only thing I can think of how someone stoned can be as dangerous as a drunk driver is if they are going too slow or something and someone hits them.
 

Cowboysrock55

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"Currently, one of nine drivers involved in fatal crashes would test positive for marijuana,
This is such a meaningless statistic if for example one in nine drivers would already test positive for pot. If you're not working off a baseline then it doesn't really show that marijuana in any way actually helped to cause those accidents. Just an example of how writers manipulate numbers to try and get people outraged.
 

boozeman

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This is such a meaningless statistic if for example one in nine drivers would already test positive for pot. If you're not working off a baseline then it doesn't really show that marijuana in any way actually helped to cause those accidents. Just an example of how writers manipulate numbers to try and get people outraged.
Not to mention that I could smoke a joint weeks before my car crash and test positive. It is not like alcohol which has a shorter trace life.
 

mcnuttz

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boozeman

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Involving pot, not caused by pot.
So um, yeah, people are smoking more weed. Hell, I could have told you that. In the average month, about 15% of the people who try to get jobs where I work flunk a drug test and the clear majority are for weed.
 
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