New Jersey adults may have differing opinions on how to spend the marijuana tax revenue, but a recent study shows that the majority of them do not think it should go towards anti-drug or police campaigns.
In a recent study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, 1,006 New Jerseyans were asked to select from seven different revenue preferences, such as public health, affordable housing, funding for police, courts, and prisons, and to indicate their preference.
Researchers from Rutgers University, Drexel University, and the University of Pennsylvania found that while no category received more than 25%, “there was more general support for community-based initiatives such as public health, housing and education, than for funding courts, police, and prisons.”
This is how participants ranked their revenue preferences:
- Education: 24 percent
- Public Health Initiatives: 21 Percent
- Affordable Housing: 15%
- Transportation/infrastructure: 13 percent
- Other/don’t know:
- Police/courts/prisons: 11 percent
- Campaigns against drug abuse: 4 per cent
The study states that “Insights into public opinion regarding funding priorities suggest a desire to invest in fundamental social institutions, such as education and public healthcare, rather than punitive enforcement measures which have defined cannabis policies for many decades.”
The findings reflect a debate played out across the country in both legislatures and political campaigns, where legalization supporters generally oppose proposals to use tax revenue from cannabis to support institutions that have perpetuated punitive drugs policies that ending prohibition is meant to correct.
The new poll revealed that, like other aspects of the legalization discussion, there were partisan differences on the question of tax revenue.
“Relative to Democrats, Republicans were consistently less supportive of selecting any of the funding priorities compared with the funding of police/courts/prisons,” the study authors said.
Another glaring datapoint from the survey that seems to speak to the disparate enforcement of cannabis criminalization against Black people is that “only one Black respondent identified funding for police/courts/prisons as their top priority” for marijuana tax dollars.
The study concluded that “Cannabis legalization can be developed to address social harms. Reinvestment of tax revenues is one possible mechanism.” The study concluded that “despite this, it has not been explored whether and how people think this tax reinvestment could be used to support disadvantaged community and/or achieve health equity.”
The study was funded through a grant by the Ohio State University Drug Enforcement and Policy Center. . If implemented, formal funding for health and justice initiatives could have a significant impact on communities that are facing health inequalities as well as the harms associated with punitive cannabis laws.
Relatedly, in December, New Jersey’s governor and state attorney general announced the recipients of $5.2 million in hospital-based violence-intervention grants funded with revenue from state-legal marijuana.
In recent months, the debate about tax revenue allocation also came to the forefront in Ohio, where activists fought back against efforts by the GOP-controlled state legislature to restructure a voter-approved law , , in part by allocating more money to law enforcement .
The article Marijuana tax revenue should fund education and housing, not police and prisons, voters say in a new poll first appeared on Marijuana Moment.
