Legislative Analyst’s Office Issues Report on Prop 19

From Tax Cannabis 2010:

(Sacramento, CA) The California Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO), which provides non-partisan fiscal and policy advice, yesterday [July 20, 2010] released a report on Proposition 19, the initiative to control and tax cannabis in California. The report found that Proposition 19 would enable California to steer police resources toward more pressing matters, generate hundreds of millions in revenue to fund vital services, and protect children, roadways, and workplaces.

Deconstructing the Opposition's Claims About the RAND Taxation Analysis

One of the issues in the recent study by the RAND Corporation that has been seized by opponents of Proposition 19 is that the tax revenue from ending cannabis prohibition will not be as great as projected. Roger Salazar, spokesman for "No on Prop 19" claims the RAND study shows, "...even the local tax revenues could be dramatically lower than the claims made by the proponents. In fact, RAND said there would be a greater financial reward to evade new local taxes on a pound of marijuana than there would be to smuggle a pound of marijuana from Mexico to California."

Of course, what the disingenuous Mr. Salazar is not mentioning are two major problems with the RAND analysis being applied to Proposition 19 that I pointed out in my last post, among other numerous caveats made by the authors of the study themselves and conveniently left out of Mr. Salazar's list of "findings," taken primarily from their page two summaries.