This is good news and bad news. The funding for schools will be a boon to education in the state, and that's certainly not bad. However, I expect will almost certainly lead to decreased education funding from other revenue sources, and ultimately place education footing on less solid ground for years to come.
It was brilliant PR move to earmark the tax revenue for education, there's no doubt about that. It's very hard to argue with such things, and many other states have opted to dedicate certain "sin taxes" to select public works. For example, earmarking some funds for veterans affairs out of state lottery tickets as my state (Iowa) does, or education as many more states do.
On the surface, this seems like a brilliant way to justify revenue collection for what many citizens would consider unseemly or undignified. It is an effective sales pitch to say to a voter, "You may disagree with marijuana legalization, but it will bring in $50 million dollars to state schools."
The problem is that budgets will adjust to incorporate this earmark for future years. That is, education budgets are likely to reflect this revenue for future years. That's precisely what has happened in so many states where state lottery revenues have been earmarked for education and other noble causes. John Oliver's Last Week Tonight had an excellent take on a similar topic: the "sin tax" of state lottery tickets. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA
It is wonderful that marijuana taxes are going to a good cause. It is dangerous to make education funding dependent on a volatile tax source, and the evidence suggests that is exactly what will happen.
Sure, but we didn't earmarking marijuana taxes for education so that we could improve education. Any informed voter would know that. We did it so that we could get uninformed/uneducated voters to pass the legislation. Now, I don't mean "uninformed/uneducated voters" in a negative way. Most voters, even intelligent ones, are classed as uninformed/uneducated when it comes to most topics. Because really, who has time during their day to research all of these measures? And funding education sounds good. So a little "end justifies the means" was used here to make moves towards ending the war on drugs.
I want to re-iterate, using marijuana taxes for education had nothing to do with improving education. Those who have studied the educational system in the U.S. know that funding is not the primary issue. The system itself is sick, and not from malnutrition. It is misguided, is mis-incentivized, and in many ways corrupt (mostly due to incompetence).
For example, in the past few years when schools have gotten additional funding, they have tended to spend it on technology. They buy iPads for students and teachers, smartboards, and online learning management services (Blackboard, Google Classroom, etc).
None of those things have had a meaningful impact on the quality of education. The schools continue to underpay teachers, promote hostile work environments, continue to promote overpriced, poor quality textbooks, don't feed their poor students, force teachers to buy their own supplies, make students sick by not running AC, accept donations from their teachers and parents, and the list goes on.
What I'm getting at is that additional funding for education is not, and will not ever be about improving the quality of education. If voters want to improve education they need to focus their attention on fixing the system itself first. Funding should only ever be increased in tandem with efforts to root out bad actors and steer our sinking ship of education away from the rocky harbor it's currently in.
Blindly increasing educational spending is the same as blindly donating food and money to the proverbial "Africa". In a similar manner, the corrupt governments where that money and food goes steal those resources to continue to fund their wars and terror. We need a Bill & Melinda Gates for education, not more fund raising.
I am in Arizona, one of the least funded states in terms of education. Your statement " accept donations from their teachers and parents," is slightly off here. In Arizona they DEMAND money. My free public school education came with a 'recommended' $1500 per year, per kid. They do accept payments however.
It is not mandatory, your kid is not expelled if you don't pay. But the school does very clearly say "this charter school has better teachers, because we pay bonuses out of the donation money". So I make payments, because the other choices would be private school (more $$), regular public school (less education), or homeschool (no.).
It is not 'accept donations' . Require, or demand. Personally, I make payments.
A charter school is not a public school. It exists outside of this system you are talking about, and has a whole host of other problems. But it is disingenuous to bring a charter school into this discussion, because they are not the same thing as publicly funded public schools.
Aren't Bill and Melinda Gates already the Bill and Melinda Gates of education?
"Our United States Division works to improve U.S. high school and postsecondary education and support vulnerable children and families in Washington State."
The Gates Foundation is by far the biggest philanthropic organization in U.S. education, even though the primary focus of the Gates Foundation is global public health.
In my state, these kinds of expenditures are funded through district bonds which are a one-shot property tax increase for a set period of time, whereas teacher salaries and other yearly expenditures are funded through levies which have to be periodically increased to keep pace. Additionally, whenever we pass referenda to bump the base pay for educators, the state legislature is very very quick to turn them into unfunded mandates. It's not an issue with the districts or the voters, it's fundamentally a problem with the legislature and how they earmark funding.
I think you're very wrong about educational funding. There's a high correlation between a schools relative wealth and its relative academic success in each state (mainly tied to property taxes). Yes, I'm sure there are exceptions, and yes there's lots of room for systematic improvement. But more money could absolutely make a difference at the underperforming schools.
Your hunch is correct. Wealthy areas have a demographic that supports education. When kids have stable homes, with parents who care about them and their education, schools do well.
When kids move three or four times a year, never know if they are going to eat dinner that night, get beaten or ignored at home, have parents on drugs or in and out of jail, it doesn't matter how much money you pour into the schools.
Are sin taxes really that volatile? I don't have good data, but many people suggest marijuana (as well as alcohol) is counter-cyclical and demand is relatively inelastic.
Even a small (4-6%) change in revenue can wipe out inflationary increases in funding for education. Even if they're counter-cyclical, the evidence is that replacing education funding with something more volatile is risky, because it's replacing consistent funding with something that is based on market dynamics.
A better solution would be to have a budget that accounted for potential volatility, and specified where surpluses should go, and where things should be cut from if revenues are down.
State governments generally do not without some creative accounting. Most states have "balanced budget" requirements, although they're allowed to issue bonds - provided said bonds are specifically earmarked for specific programs, and in some cases approved through a separate process like a referendum.
Yes, but wouldn't it be way better to make them honestly try to balance budgets, rather than knowing they can always over-run and kick the can down the road?
In Ireland in 2008 we were warned the only two industries that would remain unaffected by the looming recession were the funeral and cigarette manufacturing industry. The two were absolutely stable the entire time almost every other industry brought in less tax revenue/revenue.
Sin taxes can be some of the most stable sources of income as in the case of cigarettes and this is more evident during times of downturn when everything else is being slashed or falling in value. The problem is you need to wait to judge revenue after other states legalise.
Death is inevitable. Cigarettes are addictive - there's a physiological impetus to continue smoking if you're addicted. Marijuana is significantly less addictive, and it takes very little willpower to stop using it during times of hardship.
For clarification I wasn't referring to the funeral industry as a "Sin Tax" -- I just included it because it was a quoted industry so we can agree to discard it. My point is "Sin Taxes" in the case of tobacco are extremely stable even if predictably dwindling. Tobacco is universally and legally available. Marijuana isn't as addictive but luxury goods/Sin Taxes have a whole different set of economic laws applying to them that makes them stable and both MJ and tobacco are luxury goods.
It's also pretty trivial for smokers to grow a few marijuana plants if disposable income gets low. There goes that tax revenue. Cigarette tobacco on the other hand requires more processing and growing it for personal consumption generally isn't done.
This fact - that weed is not an industrial crop solely amenable to cultivation by industrial agriculture - is one of two major reasons that weed isn't legal and tobacco is.
The other is that grass makes the citizenry less economically productive.
I use marijuana as a pain killer alternative to opiate based pills. I can not stop using it, I have a chronic pain condition. My consumption exceeds the top 10 of my friends casual use. I don't think marijuana revenue will decline as much as you do.
I would think that your anecdotal evidence wouldn't map to the actual circumstances very well. A strong majority of marijuana users in Colorado are recreational, and they can give it up without any physical consequences like you would face if they had to deal with difficult financial times.
According to [0], $326,716,273.59 sales were made for medical marijuana, $246,810,599.03 sales were made for recreational marijuana. Recreational marijuana is also a little less than 30% more expensive. [1]
I guess that means that more pot is being sold with a medicinal marijuana card than recreational. Or, did you have other numbers?
The line between medical and recreational is (or at least was) very fuzzy, though.
Before recreational was legal there were a lot of more or less healthy people getting licenses for silly symptoms, like nausea or difficulty sleeping. There was a very low burden or proof and it was pretty well known that a lot of people were making up problems just to get the license.
I don't know of anybody actually doing it, but it's entirely possible that a lot of the not-so-serious medicinal users are now just keeping the license for price discounts and better availability. It'll be interesting to see those numbers in a few years as the licenses need to be renewed.
Medical marijuana is not subject to any special taxes (aside from normal sales tax on all goods, which is 2.9% across the state + any local sales tax). That amounts to less than $10MM, and it dosn't count towards the tax revenues from Amendment 64, which was the constitutional amendment that legalized recreational marijuana.
It's also worth mentioning that because it is relatively easy to access a medical marijuana card in Colorado, heavy recreational users have an incentive to get a medical card.
In particular as smoking seems to tie in directly with the stress response. Stress any smoker, and the first thing they want to do is to light one up. And what is more stressful than being "downsized"...
I don't see what your concern has to do with marijuana taxes. Education funding is always in jeopardy, and has been for decades. Marijuana taxes are another source of funding, but nothing else has really changed.
Marijuana taxes are not the sole source of education funding, and they're not even close to being the biggest funding source. Politicians will have to budget funding for education just like they always have.
Edit: FWIW, I looked it up, and we (Colorado) spent $4.2 billion on K-12 education and another 2.8 billion on higher education in 2013. The marijuana tax revenue number mentioned in the article is only $70 million, which is less than 1% of the total education budget.
Earmarking is PR, it has little to no effect on actual education budgets (beyond setting an irrelevant floor). Money is fungible and budgets for education are never actually indexed to revenue from a particular tax.
Couldn't Colorado just use the additional tax income for more long-term projects (building new schools or upgrading existing ones, for example) or products that could enhance education in schools (more computers, tablets, textbooks, etc), that wouldn't require an ongoing commitment of funds every year?
The silliest tax earmark was for anti-pot education, especially aimed at under 18. Seeing users and magazine ads everywhere saying it is good for adults, but how could you say its bad for teens then?
Well one argument is that teen brains are not done developing, and something that has a negligible effect on an adult might not be so for teenagers... even if there are no harmful long-term effects it might interfere with schoolwork or other things that teenagers are responsible for. I have read these arguments but I don't know what the available evidence points to, this seems like the kind of thing I'd want this sort of education to cover.
Alcohol and tobacco are most definitely harmful for everybody, and it's certainly possible to argue that choosing to use a potentially harmful substance is not something minors are prepared to make a reasoned judgement about.
More generally, I think that showing teenagers that people who buy ads in magazines don't necessarily have their best interests at heart is a good thing!
The irony seems lost on them that something similar happens within your body with constant drug use. Let's hope the sin tax scenario remains open to future reversibility as the body does.
It was brilliant PR move to earmark the tax revenue for education, there's no doubt about that. It's very hard to argue with such things, and many other states have opted to dedicate certain "sin taxes" to select public works. For example, earmarking some funds for veterans affairs out of state lottery tickets as my state (Iowa) does, or education as many more states do.
On the surface, this seems like a brilliant way to justify revenue collection for what many citizens would consider unseemly or undignified. It is an effective sales pitch to say to a voter, "You may disagree with marijuana legalization, but it will bring in $50 million dollars to state schools."
The problem is that budgets will adjust to incorporate this earmark for future years. That is, education budgets are likely to reflect this revenue for future years. That's precisely what has happened in so many states where state lottery revenues have been earmarked for education and other noble causes. John Oliver's Last Week Tonight had an excellent take on a similar topic: the "sin tax" of state lottery tickets. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA
It is wonderful that marijuana taxes are going to a good cause. It is dangerous to make education funding dependent on a volatile tax source, and the evidence suggests that is exactly what will happen.