An opinion piece on The Daily Breeze brings up the fact that legalizing Marijuana could bring in Billions of dollars a year to the state of California. I've been telling this to people for a long time now, as it is, we're taxing medical marijuana, which will bring in an incredible amount of money for the golden (green) state. Here's a snip:

How much pot is grown in California? The take from the annual Campaign Against Marijuana Production, a joint campaign of state, federal and local authorities, now approaches $7 billion in street value, but law enforcement spokesmen generally estimate they confiscate no more than one-tenth of the crop.

That estimate recently spurred the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors to implore its local congressman, Democrat Mike Thompson, to press forward efforts to get marijuana legalized. As medical pot users in California have frequently discovered since passage of Proposition 215 in 1996 attempted to legalize medicinal use with a doctor's recommendation, any significant leglization will have to come from the federal level. State laws are simply too easy for federal agents to overrule.