Jacob Sullum asks, Would Legal Marijuana Mean an Excise Tax Bonanza? No, not really:
Gieringer suggests a tax of 50 cents to $1 per joint, which is extremely heavy even compared to the cigarette taxes that prevail in New York City ($3 a pack, or 15 cents a cigarette, on top of the federal excise tax of 39 cents a pack). Even a levy as big as Gieringer proposes would bring in revenues that “might range from $2.2 to $6.4 billion per year,” according to his estimate.
Here’s where the bonanza would come from:
Drug law enforcement costs something like $40 billion a year, and marijuana accounted for 43 percent of drug arrests in 2005.