Five Reasons Marijuana Should be Legal – Ryan O’Bryan’s List – Reason Four

#4 - It's good for the economy

Everybody thinks they have the answer when it comes to what's best for fixing our busted economy. Let me be the first to suggest that what the economy needs is to sit back, relax, and get stoned out of its gourd.

The site, drugsense.org has a continually running "Drug War Clock" which uses information obtained from the Office of National Drug Control Policy to track the amount of money spend on the "War on Drugs". As of this writing, the amount of money spent so far this year on the federal and state level combined has already exceeded 19.8 billion dollars.

According to a 2007 report by Jon Gettman, Director of Communications for the National Organization of Reformed Marijuana Laws (NORML), an estimated 14, 349 metric tons of weed is available in the United States annually with a retail value of nearly 113 billion dollars. Every penny of which is untaxed.

I'm sure there's one person who will read this and write me off as some tree-hugging, whale-loving, liberal who wants more government in our lives. That's not the case at all. My point being that there's a ton of untapped revenue there that could lead to better lives for all of us. Think about where that money could go; Social Security and the U.S. Postal Service may not be on the brink of disintegrating if they were able to obtain just a portion of the funding generated from the legalization of marijuana. Perhaps our schools could afford the resources and teachers they need in order to make sure our kids have the best education available to keep up with the rest of the world.

The point being, there are a number of publicly funded local, state, and federal programs that could benefit greatly from even a tiny piece of the weed pie (Mmmmmm, weed pie).