2012 was a fantastic year for people who wanted to see marijuana legalized. Amendment 64 in Colorado passed with a 55 percent – 44 percent margin, and with its passage, Colorado became one of the first states in the country to legalize recreational marijuana.
But with legalization comes some restraints, which came in the form of Proposition AA. The measure was approved by the voters of Colorado and instituted a series of taxes on the sale of marijuana.
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This, predictably, will cause the price of pot to go up quite a bit. And with the price increase comes the possibility that people would potentially refuse to buy their weed through legal channels, opting for dealers that sell without the taxes.
That shouldn’t happen.
The reason why 64 passed in the first place is because marijuana would be regulated. For the people that don’t make a habit of smoking weed, this was positive. The last thing that the proponents of legalized marijuana need is for marijuana smokers to buck the legal distributors in favor of illegal ones.
If weed is legal, but its still bought illegally, then what was the point of legalizing it in the first place?
Critics of 64 would jump on that as a reason to make marijuana illegal again.
If you want to have a fight about the fairness of AA’s tax hike, that’s great. Let’s have that debate. But what you don’t want is to have to justify the legality of marijuana again.
Don’t give your critics a reason to make it illegal again.
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