Nick+Foli

= What would be the economic effects of marijuana legalization in canada? = = = ====There would be many economic changes if marijuana was legalized in Canada. First off, the revenue made from selling cannabis illegally in just British Columbia alone is almost 35 billion dollars a year. Thats more money than the forest industry makes from exports to the US ** in any year, and is about two and a half times the amount of money made from agricultural exports for the entire country. Now if marijuana was to be legalized, the Canadian government could put a tax on it and sell it too, making a large revenue. If they were to apply the HST to that (13%) the tax generated would be about 4.5 billion dollars. Also, there is tourism to factor in. If only one percent if the American population came to BC to buy their bud, that would equal about 90 billion dollars of income for our country. That, plus the money made in just BC, is 125 billion dollars. Another aspect of this is the hemp that can be produced. Hemp can be used to make paper, fabric, and many other things. It is much better to use than trees, because trees take about 20 years to grow back, as opposed to hemp which takes about 4 months. Hemp is also cheaper to produce at one quarter the cost of normal paper, and is apparently better quality. With about 15 billion dollars of annual wood pulp exports, since hemp is cheaper, it has the potential to make about 60 billion dollars if it replaced wood. So add that onto the 125 billion, and the BC government could make up to 185 billion dollars at the most. That is about 13% of the entire GDP for the country. The government would also save around 1.5 billion dollars for not having to pay as much for law enforcement. The national debt of Canada is about 520 billion as of April 26th, so just the money made in BC would cut down our national debt by more than 1/5. I haven't even added the tourism revenue onto that number yet, which would be about 90 billion dollars. So as you can see Canada would be out of debt very soon after if marijuana was legalized. Also, over 70% of Canadians approve of legalization. ** ====