Sin taxes are suffering from a shortage of sinners

I'm always surprised at how "little" the use of the taxes for marijuana have made an impact. Either it's being grossly managed, or there's just not as much sales from mary jane as I would have expected.

In my state, supposedly about 1/4 of the retail price is sin tax. In dollars, that's about $400 million last year, or about $32 for every resident, or 0.7% of total state revenues.

I think I'm OK with that? If people were consuming enough cannabis to make a really sizable impact on the budget, the bulk of the effect would probably be not so much a result of increased excise taxes so much as because of plummeting income tax revenues from everyone being too stoned to hold down a job anymore.

In short, hoping for a really noticeable budgetary impact from recreational cannabis legalization is probably a "be careful what you wish for" situation.