Gov. Gretchen Whitmer threw down the gauntlet on Thursday for Michigan residents who are both sick of the state’s abysmal road conditions, and also not nearly high enough.
“At its height, the taxes for marijuana will raise about $42 million dollar per year for infrastructure. We have a $2.5 billion dollar problem,” Whitmer said at the Mackinac Policy Conference, referencing the state’s 10% excise tax on its newly legalized recreational weed industry—a portion of which is allotted for infrastructure repairs.
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After explaining that she gets asked about using marijuana funds to fix the roads so often, she ordered her staff to crunch the numbers, Whitmer issued her challenge:
Every man, woman, and child would have to smoke about $2,500 of marijuana a year to fix our roads. And let’s be honest, at that level no one’s gonna care about the damn roads.
This is clearly not Whitmer’s preferred outcome, but hey, she’s raising the prospect.
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Whitmer’s “pot for potholes” (her line, not mine) comments come at around 25:50 in the video below:
In fact, when you factor out underage stoners, that number goes up to $10,000 per year, according to the Metro Times, which also quotes Whitmer using a similar line in a speech to the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce earlier this month.
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Instead, Whitmer has proposed a $0.45-per-gallon gas tax to fund her state’s cratered roads—an idea that’s sure to be popular in the heart of America’s automotive industry.
So, there you have it, Michiganians: Either pay much, much more at the pump, or start getting super-duper stoned. It’s a real dilemma, but I’m sure you’ll make the right decision.
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