llinois has collected more than $424 million in tax revenue from recreational marijuana sales in 2021, and Michigan collected about $246.6 million.
Wisconsin still bans the drug in most forms, but the legislature continues to flirt with legalizing medical marijuana.
In the two years since launching its recreational marijuana program, Illinois has received more than half a billion dollars in tax revenue, according to the Illinois Department of Revenue.
Over $100 million of that will finance programs aimed at investing in communities hardest hit by the drug war, with a large chunk going to fund grants for minority communities disproportionately impacted by gun injuries, child poverty, unemployment and incarceration, the state says. About $100 million was deposited into Illinois’ general fund.
Funds from cannabis revenue will also go to local governments, a marijuana regulation fund, facilitating the process of expunging criminal marijuana charges, administrative costs, a public health campaign and research on the effects of legalization.
Recreational marijuana tax revenue is a “found money” resource, where one previously didn’t exist, by Douglas Berman, a law professor who is the director of the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at Ohio State University.
“If the money is used well, it can do a lot of good,” Berman said. “It’s not going to fill every pothole or solve every pension crisis, however it can be wonderful for additional resources.”
Of the more than $200 million gathered in Michigan, $20 million will be given annually to clinical trials researching the efficacy of marijuana in treating veterans’ medical conditions and preventing veteran suicide, according to state documents. Funds will also go to a K-12 school aid fund, repair and maintenance of roads and bridges, and municipalities and counties where marijuana businesses are located.
Under Wisconsin law, marijuana possession is a felony, though the state has legalized products from non-intoxicating cannabidiol, commonly known as CBD, and the growing of hemp.
Marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug both federally and in Wisconsin, meaning the governments officially consider it to have a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States and that it lacks accepted safety for use in treatment under medical supervision.
Other Schedule 1 drugs at the state level include heroin, MDMA and PCP.
“There’s this widespread sense that the harms expressed at the outset (of legalizing recreational marijuana) may exist a little bit, but they haven’t been as big a deal as you might think,” Berman said.
Marijuana legalization has little effect on the crime rate in either direction, according to an ongoing study by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington D.C., though it notes the data is still limited. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found little to no change in traffic crashes in places where cannabis had been legalized.
Wisconsin state Sen. Melissa Agard, D-Madison, has introduced a bill to legalize recreational marijuana in each of the last five legislative sessions. When she first proposed the bill in 2014, it received only five co-sponsors, she said. Her 2021 effort lists 40 co-authors and co-sponsors…
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