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That $150M figure is probably based on the experience in Colorado. I think WV would probably see lower tax revenues due to having fewer people than CO. However, it's free money. WV should copy the laws that were passed in CO and legalize it without delay.
Just wait 10 years and we will see the effect of its legalization in Colorado. I'm willing to bet that while revenue will increase for a little while, over time their economy will suffer because of a decline in work productivity, educational attainment, and overall quality of life. Those factors will lead to a balancing out of revenue and lost, and the legalization of marijuana would have only been a temporary economic gain with no long-term benefit.
WV has a major drug problem now, why would we create an environment even more welcoming to getting high. Marijuana by itself isn't all that potent or dangerous, but it is the idea of getting "high" that elevates users to more serious drugs (both prescription and street).
The solution to WV's economic shortfalls are attracting business, and supporting industries that already call WV home. Ohio's economy has grown by this method, and honestly we aren't so different that we couldn't capitalize on some of the methods that worked there.
Many people talk about a connection to the ground itself. West Virginia doesn’t look quite like any other place—hardly any flat land, because the densely wooded hills are crushed so close together there’s barely room for a road between them—and its confining closeness forms a kind of physical bond between people who find it familiar. “When I’m in California, I feel like something bad’s going to happen, because there’s so much empty space,” Ed Martin says. “Here it’s cozy. If you believe the mountains are yours, like most West Virginians do, when you get back to these mountains you feel comfortable again. You feel at ease.” “When I see the mountains,” Kyle Lovern says, “it’s like they’re embracing me.”
This was my favorite part of the article. I couldn't say it better myself as a fellow resident of Appalachia. Overall, it was a pretty good article, I thought. It would be easy to resort to simple explanations, but the author seems to have done their homework and understands a bit about how people in some of the struggling, rural, parts of the United States think and see the world.
It really is a great read to be honest. But this part literally made me laugh out loud.....this guy has "lived in alot of places", they must of all been states like Nebraska, where I would kinda share his opinion. Nebraskans are very happy people, but not particularly because they love "Nebraska", although Im sure there are plenty. But states like California and yes, my Texas, are filled to the brim with people who are fervently proud of their state just because it is "California" or "Texas".....Im pretty sure you could go to Florida, New York, Ohio, Michigan, etc also and find very quickly people who would say they love that state, just because. To suggest WV is the only one is one of the silliest things Ive ever read.
But again, I did enjoy the read overall. Still votin for Clinton though lol.
Quote:
West Virginians are always saying two things about themselves—that they love their state and that they are family oriented. “We’re very proud, although there’s not a whole lot to be proud of,” Raamie Barker, a former adviser to the governor who now teaches high school with Ojeda, says. “There’s really not. But we won’t let anybody put West Virginia down.” This may sound pretty hackneyed, but in fact what West Virginians mean by love of state and family is unusual and particular. “I’ve lived in a lot of places, and I’ve never seen this kind of pride and love,” Ed Martin, the publisher of the Logan Banner, says. “People will say, I love West Virginia. Nobody has ever said anything like that to me anywhere else. It just doesn’t come up. People may love where they live, but it’s not because they love their state.
This was my favorite part of the article. I couldn't say it better myself as a fellow resident of Appalachia. Overall, it was a pretty good article, I thought. It would be easy to resort to simple explanations, but the author seems to have done their homework and understands a bit about how people in some of the struggling, rural, parts of the United States think and see the world.
One of my favorite quotes I've come across:
“Mountain country places its mark on those who
dwell within its shadows…And thus it is with those
nurtured in Appalachia — they leave, but they look back,
remembering pleasant things. The land has claimed them,
and its ties will not be severed.” - Maurice Brooks
A typically stereotyped article that paints the whole state with the same brush, and that brush is rooted in the southern coalfields. It essentially implies that the entire state is like that, which is blatantly false.
Just wait 10 years and we will see the effect of its legalization in Colorado. I'm willing to bet that while revenue will increase for a little while, over time their economy will suffer because of a decline in work productivity, educational attainment, and overall quality of life. Those factors will lead to a balancing out of revenue and lost, and the legalization of marijuana would have only been a temporary economic gain with no long-term benefit.
WV has a major drug problem now, why would we create an environment even more welcoming to getting high. Marijuana by itself isn't all that potent or dangerous, but it is the idea of getting "high" that elevates users to more serious drugs (both prescription and street).
The solution to WV's economic shortfalls are attracting business, and supporting industries that already call WV home. Ohio's economy has grown by this method, and honestly we aren't so different that we couldn't capitalize on some of the methods that worked there.
Exactly right. We already have enough legal vices. We don't need any more. We have replaced heavy industry as a source of taxes with the insanity of a lottery system that bleeds the poor, and have advertisements all over the place depicting that as something somehow positive. We've even squandered money on a Lottery Taj Mahal and painted it up for the whole world to see. Now they are proposing getting new taxes by encouraging non productivity. In the long run, that would not be a good policy.
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New Yorker article on WV and politics
