Marijuana legalization to pay local dividends
When marijuana use moved into the mainstream middle-class in the 1960s, after years of being a vice limited to jazz clubs and the coffee houses of the Beat Generation, fans routinely argued that governments would make a fortune if they controlled cannabis sales like they did liquor.
Although anyone with common sense knew that was so, it was a matter of overcoming more than 70 years of federal and state governments’ anti-marijuana propaganda (based primarily on social and racial prejudices) for the general population and elected officials to embrace that notion as well.
That 70-plus years, incidentally, is counting from the notoriously bad and unintentionally hilarious “Reefer Madness” film of 1936 to the legalization of recreational marijuana use by Colorado and Washington in 2012. Maryland waited 11 years, until July 1, 2023.
And now, the big question facing this and other Maryland counties is what to do with their share of proceeds from a source that at one time they would have steadfastly opposed.
As it is, and accepting the fact that nothing excites local government and nonprofit organizations more than the possibility of free money, Worcester County officials are about to be flooded with requests for a piece of the $1,084,216 it has received as its share of the state’s marijuana tax revenue.
As County Administrator Weston Young noted this week, applicants for grants from this fund will have to do much more than simply make a request in writing. They will have to present a strong and detailed account of what they want to do, how they intend to do it and how it will benefit the community.
The irony in all this, however, is difficult to overlook, considering that the good works organizations and small governments seek to do today with marijuana money would have landed plenty of Marylanders in jail during the war on drugs era.
What this proves is that society is constantly evolving, while governments tend to wait and then play catch-up when real money is involved.