Justin Shenk from Pennsylvania-based 420 Print Media, left, and Marissa Harris, right, march up the steps of the state capitol in Harrisburg prior to yesterday s 4/20 rally for legalization. (Yoko Furukawa for Leafly)
HARRISBURG, PA A raucous crowd of advocates marked this 4/20 by urging Pennsylvania state legislators to legalize cannabis and stop arresting 20,000 people for marijuana possession every year in the Keystone State.
“Nobody deserves to be a criminal for a plant!” Jeff Riedy, Executive Director of the Lehigh Valley NORML chapter, proclaimed to a cheering crowd gathered on the steps of the state capitol in Harrisburg. “Gardening is never a crime.”
More than 30% of cannabis products in Illinois are being purchased by out-of-state residents. That means neighboring prohibition states could be losing as much as $10 million per month in tax revenue to Illinois. (AdobeStock)
It’s common for states that legalize adult-use cannabis to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue that would otherwise flow to the illicit market.
$10 million in taxes leak into Illinois from neighboring states every month. Illinois is happy to take it.
What’s less well known is how much tax money prohibition states are giving up to their legal-state neighbors. In other words: How many people in prohibition states are traveling to legal states to buy state-licensed cannabis? Data on that question is hard to come by with one exception.