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Drugs, prostitution, sports gambling.
Aside from a decent Vegas weekend, these are all three American industries that remain illegal and untaxed.
Are we missing out on an easy way to fix the deficit?
We're tallying up the price of vice and that's today's BFD.
Brain Food Daily! BFD.
Hey I'm Travon Free and this is Brain Food Daily.
Four years since the housing crash and the American economy is still in shambles.
We need to try something new, so we got to thinking.
How much could the country save if we legalized it? All of it!
Now I'm not going to waste your time talking about the moral reasons all these things should be legal.
Who wants to hear about how no one has ever died from weed?
Or the wonderful thing 50 Euros can get you in Amsterdam?
What I am going to talk about is all the money we can make by decriminalizing and taxing these industries.
It's time for some stoner math.
Let's say possession and distribution of drugs became legal tomorrow
How much money will we save? Ending the war on drugs can save the government about $41.3 billion dollars annually.
And in stoner terms that's enough to buy roughly 21 billion Doritos locos tacos, very delicious by the way.
This might sound crazy, but recently Portugal legalized drugs and evidence suggests
it was awesome
More users have gone to treatment, *** diagnoses and drug uses have decreased
and drug use among adolescents has declined.
And best of all
Drugs got cheaper!
On top of that, if our government could tax illegal drugs, like we tax alcohol and cigarettes
We'd make an estimated $46.7 billion annually, on top of what we would be saving eliminating prosecution and other crimes.
That's $88 billion total so far,
and I'm not just blowing smoke up your *** either.
Because, I've tried that and that's a terrible way to get high...
The world's oldest profession is also an illegal one.
But, our good friends in Nevada have decided to look the other way.
The average sex worker in a Nevada brothel makes a $100 grand a year.
With over one million sex workers in America, that's a staggering $20 billion per year in tax revenue
Not to mention a regulated sex industry can make the whole thing safer and healthier.
So that's $20 billion from legalizing prostitution, $88 billion from legalizing drugs,
and now we're adding even $108 billion pour back in America's economy
On to sports betting,
Estimates suggest that up to 480 billion dollars is illegally gambled on sporting events every year
According to estimates, that could add up to 24 billion dollars a year in tax revenue,
which brings our grand total to $132 billion we are missing out on
Let's see now what am I forgetting? Um, oh yeah! Prison.
Non-violent drug offenders account for about ΒΌ of all inmates.
If we let them out, tax payers would stop having to pay fthose rent, food, and clothing bills.
Saving us $8 billion a year, so there is your final price of vice.
140$ billion dollars is no joke.
Click the link below to learn more about the movement to end the drug war.
We know this is a heated topic, so please leave your comments below.
We want to know what you think.
I'm Travon Free and thanks for watching Brain Food Daily.