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In reply to the discussion: Police Groups Furiously Protest Eric Holder's Marijuana Policy Announcement [View all]jmowreader
(50,555 posts)According to http://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-meth-lab-cleanup-program-contains-costs-for-tennessee.html the national average cost for cleaning up a meth lab is $2500.
At that rate, a meth lab a month will run the county $30,000 per year. Most counties can afford that. Up that to four a month and...well, you get the idea: just cleaning up the labs would be expensive enough. That doesn't count the costs of busting the cooks, taking down their networks, putting them in jail, and so on, and so on, and so on. I know in my county, if the sheriff were to walk into the county commission and tell them he needs an extra million bucks because he's decided to forego busting potheads in favor of meth labs, they'd impeach the poor guy on the spot and he does a decent-enough job. Pot arrests are WAY cheaper.
But that's okay because in Idaho we have a law, one of the few that made it all the way to the governor's desk in the last session, that says pot will never be legal here for any reason. (Well, there were the five fuck-the-voters laws overturning the electorate's decision to get rid of Tom Luna's education deform plan, but most of our last session was spent arguing the need to increase truck weights. That didn't pass.)