After reading The Dispatch’s recent editorials and letters on the legalization of marijuana, I thought it was important to respond. Parents don’t want their kids to have access to marijuana. But we have to be realistic. Throughout Ohio, unregulated and untested illegal marijuana can arrive at your home faster than a pizza delivery.
What’s more, the people selling today don’t card their customers, because they don’t care about underage sales.
We need immediate reform. Ohio wastes $120 million per year to enforce its failed marijuana prohibition. ResponsibleOhio’s marijuana-legalization amendment would bring the necessary reform, by establishing the Marijuana Control Commission, whose many responsibilities would include conducting annual audits of the ten warehouses where marijuana would be grown.
And to protect our kids, the amendment would require jail for the sale of marijuana to anyone underage.
Marijuana can be consumed safely by responsible adults, and even can have many medical benefits. For example, medical marijuana can reduce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms by 75 percent, according to the National Institutes of Health and the National Center for the Treatment of PTSD.
In these instances and many more, Ohio can and should offer the compassionate care that marijuana provides when properly regulated.
Marijuana reform is also a social-justice issue, given that black Ohioans are four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana as white Ohioans, even though both groups use marijuana at equal rates.
As communities struggle to recover from damaging funding cuts, it’s time to think seriously about the tax benefits that marijuana legalization will bring.
The amendment language clearly establishes how the tax revenue would be allocated from its flat tax off the top of each commercial sale. Our initial projections show that when the market stabilizes in 2020, the marijuana industry would generate $554 million in new tax revenue each year.
Let’s stop pretending that Ohioans don’t consume marijuana or that only bad people do. Both assertions are false.
Marijuana is prevalent now, fueling a black market and supporting drug dealers instead of benefiting our communities.
It’s time for marijuana reform. It’s the right thing to do, and it will make all of us safer.
IAN JAMES
Executive director
ResponsibleOhio
Columbus
http://www.dispatch.com/content/sto.../14/1-marijuana-is-here-lets-regulate-it.html
What’s more, the people selling today don’t card their customers, because they don’t care about underage sales.
We need immediate reform. Ohio wastes $120 million per year to enforce its failed marijuana prohibition. ResponsibleOhio’s marijuana-legalization amendment would bring the necessary reform, by establishing the Marijuana Control Commission, whose many responsibilities would include conducting annual audits of the ten warehouses where marijuana would be grown.
And to protect our kids, the amendment would require jail for the sale of marijuana to anyone underage.
Marijuana can be consumed safely by responsible adults, and even can have many medical benefits. For example, medical marijuana can reduce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms by 75 percent, according to the National Institutes of Health and the National Center for the Treatment of PTSD.
In these instances and many more, Ohio can and should offer the compassionate care that marijuana provides when properly regulated.
Marijuana reform is also a social-justice issue, given that black Ohioans are four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana as white Ohioans, even though both groups use marijuana at equal rates.
As communities struggle to recover from damaging funding cuts, it’s time to think seriously about the tax benefits that marijuana legalization will bring.
The amendment language clearly establishes how the tax revenue would be allocated from its flat tax off the top of each commercial sale. Our initial projections show that when the market stabilizes in 2020, the marijuana industry would generate $554 million in new tax revenue each year.
Let’s stop pretending that Ohioans don’t consume marijuana or that only bad people do. Both assertions are false.
Marijuana is prevalent now, fueling a black market and supporting drug dealers instead of benefiting our communities.
It’s time for marijuana reform. It’s the right thing to do, and it will make all of us safer.
IAN JAMES
Executive director
ResponsibleOhio
Columbus
http://www.dispatch.com/content/sto.../14/1-marijuana-is-here-lets-regulate-it.html
