It's All About the Money

Have you ever felt that history is always doomed to repeat itself? I say, "doomed", but not necessarily in the way that means the history itself is bad, nor its repetition.

Here in the "high in the middle" and "round on both ends" state (Ohio . . . Get it?), we have two items on the ballot for the November election that deal with the controversial issue of legalizing marijuana.

Before you faze me out and move to the next blog on your RSS feed, please understand that I'm not arguing one way or another for or against the legalization of marijuana. My focus is more in line with the first sentence of this article: the repetition of history.

Here in Ohio, whether or not to allow casinos was a topic for quite a few elections. EVENTUALLY, the populace broke down and the casinos became legal. Soon, we saw nothing but prostitution, drugs, and a CSI spin off show haunting our communities. Actually, in the town of my birth, the casino brought in enough tax revenue to start a street renovation project that, so far, has cost the town NOTHING out of its own pockets. Oh, and so far, not a negative has been found.

If you look at the promised tax revenue for the schools, you can have a complaint, but you can't blame the casinos. Just like the revenue provided through the State Lottery, the state has reduced the budgets of the schools due to the "other" source of income. In other words, the money received was offset by reductions of a similar amount. So, blame the government, not the casinos.

The number one reason marijuana is becoming legal throughout our great nation is for the same reason: tax revenue. Period. And like the casinos before it, marijuana will EVENTUALLY become legal in the state of Ohio. History WILL repeat itself. Maybe it will happen this coming election. Maybe it will take a few more. But it WILL happen.

Ohio will live up to its "high in the middle" nom de plume.

© Emittravel 2015