Will Texas admit defeat to California in the battle for leadership in the growing canabis industry? With the legislature in session and a few bills filed, Texans need to take advantage of one of the biggest new industies to arise in the 21st-century.
Support for weed legalization in the US recently hit an all-time high, but looking at the industry, it's been a long time coming. Sixty-percent of Americans - up from 35% in 2005 - now support legalization, according to a Gallup poll from Wednesday.
Pro-legalization voices are now coming from some so many diverse places - including the financial industry, law enforcement officers, and traditional activists - it's no wonder a majority of Americans want legal access.
According to a 2015 poll, almost 75 percent of Texans support marijuana’s legalization or decriminalization. However iIn 2015, there were 61,748 marijuana possession arrests in Texas.
A 2010 study from the Cato Institute looking at 2008 dollars found that the outlawing of marijuana cost the United States $5.4 billion and Texas about $330 million.
A report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation in May found that legalizing weed could generate up to $28 billion in federal, state, and local tax revenue - about the same as the GDP of North Korea.
According to the Marijuana Business Fact Book, the legalized weed industry could pump as much as $44 billion a year into the Texas economy by the end of 2020. Meanwhile, The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws’ Texas branch estimates each marijuana arrest cost taxpayers around $10,000.
Legal weed would neutralize the drug black market in Texas and Mexico, and associated law enforcement expense. “If you want to have an impact on the drug trade, the best and most efficient way to do that is to go into the resale market and take the black market out,” says Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso.
Meanwhile, Colorado’s burgeoning legal marijuana industry has quickly made gains on the state’s largest industries — including the mighty oil-and-gas sector — and contributed an economic impact of $2.39 billion in 2015. The Colorado cannabis industry is credited with funding 18,005 direct and ancillary full-time jobs in 2015.
Texas has ceded it's market leadership to California. With the recent passage of legalization, California is particularly important because of the massive size of its economy. The state presents a massive opportunity for the marijuana industry - and could affect the rest of the country's attitude.
Sensing a massive opportunity, financial executives are moving rapidly into the nascent marijuana industry. It's a sign that a once-maligned plant could now potentially be a multi-billion dollar industry.
However, there's still some special interests in opposition to legal marijuana. And the funding is coming from a number of pharmaceutical companies, prison suppliers, and casino magnates.
Prison suppliers, which cater meals to correctional facilities, potentially having a lot to gain from keeping marijuana illegal. Marijuana offenses contribute considerably to the number of prisoners in correctional facilities.
It's obvious that a growing majority of Americans support legalization, and the only way they have a hope of maintaining prohibition is to put up a bunch of Reefer Madness-inspired ads in an attempt to scare voters, which costs a lot of money, but it won't work.
We have crossed the Rubicon; legalization nationwide will happen. It is now up to the Texas legislature to seize the moment and gain leadership of this new multi-billion dollar industry.
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