Nov. 6 will be the fifth anniversary of the legalization of recreational marijuana in my home state.
What have these five years brought to our community? It has generated almost $200 million annually in state tax revenue with $40 million earmarked annually for rural school funding. That’s good, right?
The argument could be made that it should have been all tax revenue except $40 million to go for education, but it is what it is.
We have a blossoming economic sector whose growth rate is only rivaled by the dot-com boom of the 1990s. This has generated new businesses and local jobs. Cant argue with that.
But here come the unintended consequences. Walmart has effectively become a low-end RV park shantytown.
I get the pleasure of regularly kicking vagrants off the property behind my workplace.
Downtown is getting a very real Tijuana, Mexico, feel to it with panhandlers on most every block. Not exactly attracting the economic demographic our local merchants are looking for.
The 21-and-over law has prevented our youth getting marijuana about as effectively as the same laws for alcohol did with me and my underage friends in high school and college.
So if you’re one of the 1 million-plus people who helped vote this legislation in, then flip that dirty, dreadlocked guitar player a few quarters – you own a small part of the reason he now lives in our town.
Mike Gardner
Durango
