State Budget Office: Reclassifying Pot Possession Would Net $17 Million a Year
The Senate bill that would make possessing small amounts of pot a ticket offense rather than a crime just got its numbers crunched. The state Office of Financial Management projects these savings (thanks to the ACLU for putting them in a chart):
Reduced Costs:
City court costs: $2,350,000
County court costs: 2,190,000
State court costs: 185,000
Prosecution: 4,667,520
Public defense: 4,936,800
Jail sentences: 1,679,040
Total Savings: $16,008,360
The bill would also bring in roughly $1 million in revenue. So the net gain would be about $17 million. (Incidentally, that's just a little more than T.J. Houshmandzadeh's signing bonus. Marijuana is like a really good wide receiver.)
$17 million is enough to restore a small number of the cut-off-the-face-to-spite-the-face cuts Christine Gregoire's looking to make, or to restore all the cuts to the UW. Or to buy Tom Carr and his drug warrior buddies an alternate reality to replace the one they're currently living in. Or maybe just a plane ticket to Japan, where it seems like they'd be happy.
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