Friday, December 19, 2008

Let Pot Smokers Fund Education

I sent a letter out a few days ago in wake of the education funding cuts announced by Governor Riley. Today it was published in the Tuscaloosa News

Let pot smokers fund education

Published: Friday, December 19, 2008 at 3:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, December 18, 2008 at 10:49 p.m.

Dear Editor: What a shame that Alabama students will be the first to suffer the effects of the economic downturn when Alabama already has some of the lowest per-pupil spending in the nation. According to the most recent data that I can find, Alabama on average spends a little more than $8,000 per student per year. Yet we spend a minimum of $13,000 per year to lock up a non-violent citizen for smoking pot.

Instead of making responsible adult cannabis consumers a burden on state taxpayers by forcing taxpayers to pay for incarceration, why not regulate and tax marijuana like we do with alcohol and tobacco and use the taxes collected to make our education system better? After all, we use the taxes from the sale of alcohol to fund DHR. There's a whole base of cannabis consumers in Alabama who would be more than happy to be taxed in exchange for a safe, regulated market.

Not only could we use the money raised in taxes for public education, we could also use it for drug prevention education and to fund treatment for those addicted to harder drugs. It would be a superb deal all the way around.

It's time to tap into the multi-billion dollar marijuana market in this country and start reaping the many benefits available as opposed to filling our prisons with people who don't belong there at the expense of our children's education.

Tax us, please!

Loretta Nall

Alexander City



4 comments:

Christie O'Brien said...

Well done.

Unknown said...

Excellent!

Maybe it'll even help to change a mind or three!

Anonymous said...

please stop begging them to tax our medecine

Loretta Nall said...

this isn't about the medical side of the drug policy debate. It's about the recreational side.