Either it’s legal or not. The reason Uruguay just recently made marijuana legal was so the government could capture the tax losses that went to drug cartels, much like governments throughout history have thrown out moneylenders for stealing large parts of the government property tax base by usurious lending followed by foreclosures – Tom Dennen

“Meanwhile a powerful host of accusers fell with sudden fury on that class which systematically increased its wealth by usury in defiance of a law passed by Caesar… defining the terms of lending money and of holding estates in Italy, a law long obsolete because the public good is sacrificed to private interest” – Publius Gaius Cornelius Tacitus, The Annals of Rome AD 27.

So why did Colorado make it legal? And do the Feds get a cut, or does that wealth stay inside the state?

Source: Denver Post

Federal authorities Thursday morning were executing search and seizure warrants at multiple Denver-area medical marijuana facilities, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The raids are occurring at both medical marijuana dispensaries and at warehouses where pot is grown.

At one raid in Boulder, a pile of seized marijuana lay in the snow like Christmas trees until a front-end loader scooped it up. At the VIP Cannabis dispensary in Denver, broken glass from a shattered front window littered the parking lot while agents hauled boxes of evidence into a U-Haul truck. Police turned customers away.

“The Drug Enforcement Administration, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigations, the Denver Police Department and state and local law enforcement are today executing lawfully obtained search warrants and seizure warrants,” said Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the DOJ.

“Although we cannot at this time discuss the substance of this pending investigation, the operation under way today comports with the Department’s recent guidance regarding marijuana enforcement matters,” Dorschner said in his e-mailed statement to The Denver Post.

“As this is an on-going investigation, no additional information will be made available,” he said.

Perhaps the Uruguay link and the quote from Tacitus above now makes sense in the war between the ‘good guys’ who deliver goods and services to the people through tax revenues and the ‘bad guys’ who deliver goods and services to a demanding public and keep the revenue that the ‘good guys’ would otherwise claim in taxes.

North Dakota has has a state budget revenue surplus for over a hundred years. It is now the only state in the Union in the black – by over a $1bn Read here to find out why.