Processing Your Payment

Please do not leave this page until complete. This can take a few moments.

February 15, 2018

Opponents: Legal weed would cost CT $216M by 2020

Flickr user Brett Levin Photography Marijuana plants.

An anti-marijuana legalization group and its Connecticut chapter say embracing recreational weed would cost the state $216 million in 2020 to administer and enforce.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), an Alexandria, Va., anti-marijuana legalization group, and its Connecticut chapter, CT-SAM, Thursday released a report projecting costs if a state policy legalizing recreational hemp was implemented in 2018.

The group pegs the administrative and enforcement costs in terms of workplace costs, increased accidents and absenteeism; increased drugged-driving fatalities, injuries and property damage; short-term health costs; more emergency room visits for marijuana poisonings; increased rates of homelessness.

Released at the State Capitol this morning, the report comes as legislators are reconsidering the possibility of legalizing recreational marijuana, in part to raise sorely needed tax revenue in the state.

SAM and CT-SAM have a mission at the local, state, tribal and federal levels of “align[ing] marijuana policy and attitudes about the drug with 21st-century science, which continues to show how marijuana use harms the mind and body.”

The report uses data from states like Colorado and figures from Connecticut Office of Fiscal Analysis to “debunk the myth” that taxed marijuana sales would ease the state's fiscal crisis. SAM's advisory board includes Dr. Yifrah Kaminer, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UConn and at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center’s Injury Prevention Center.

According to the report, marijuana legalization costs would "exceed, by more than 90 percent, the maximum projected official revenue estimate of $113.6 million for the third year of the proposed legalization program."

Kevin A. Sabet, a former Obama Administration drug policy adviser who heads SAM, said he hopes the report influences legislators as a new season gets under way.

"This report will hopefully give lawmakers in Connecticut reason to pause and consider the implications of such policies," he said.

The report is available here. 

Sign up for Enews

Most Recent

Most Recent

0 Comments

Order a PDF