The "think piece" part of this article, which makes up most of the text, is pretty hilarious:
"A key question about the public health impact of legal marijuana is how does it change alcohol consumption patterns. To the extent that legal marijuana displaces legal booze purchases, you're going to see an offsetting decline in alcohol tax revenue. Which would be fine—a big win for public health, in fact—but not quite the financial bounty states may be hoping for. Alternatively, if legal pot leads to a complementary surge in beer drinking, you'll have lots of tax revenue but potentially large problems."
So we don't have any evidence or idea if this will affect booze sales, but you know, it could! Also, if it doesn't, there could be other problems, just in general for people...
It isn't conclusively proven yet, but there is some evidence that marijuana use is correlated with less drinking. It isn't purely hypothetical, and in fact it's an argument I've heard from some legalization advocates in California.
I'm not sure where they came up with the "marijuana causes drinking" scenario, though. I've never heard of such a thing.
> I'm not sure where they came up with the "marijuana causes drinking" scenario, though.
The link between alcohol and marijuana use is very complicated, to say the least. For example, a decrease in price of marijuana leads to (obviously) more marijuana use, but (less obviously) fewer DUI-related deaths. It has also been found to be more directly linked to lower alcohol consumption. Thus, you'd want to call them substitutes (with the economic meaning of the term).
However, it has also been found that banning alcohol (on a school campus, specifically) led to a decrease in marijuana use, showing that they also can behave as complements to each other.
Its all very complicated and its hard to be sure how these interactions will go, although most evidence does seem to point in the direction of lower alcohol consumption.
Why is that hilarious? The article isn't advocating against legalization (no Slate article ever would). It's suggesting that you can't simply look at one revenue stream in isolation, because a regulatory change that boosts one revenue stream might suppress another. Which is obviously true.
Lots of things "Might" happen. But it's all just speculation without any sort of insight or evidence.
If he had cited reports, studies etc. in other states, or even countries that showed ANYTHING it would be helpful.
Instead he links to another Slate article (his own) with the same speculation, again with no sources or citation.
It'd be like if I wrote this:
"WhatsApp might be the worst thing that happened to Facebook. Imagine if everyone stops using WhatsApp because they hate facebook. That would be disastrous. Or what if they all use facebook and then stop using WhatsApp, that could be good or bad too.
Yglesias is simply pointing out a dynamic which he feels may be under-appreciated: the impact of cannabis sales on the purchase and consumption of other intoxicants. He isn't saying it will go one way or another, but merely drawing attention to this dynamic and its potential implications.
A lot of useful information follows the format of "X may affect Y in one way or another, and we need to be cognizant of how these potential interactions could impact relevant issues." Your dismissal of Yglesias conjecture as useless is, in my opinion, missing the point. Just because we don't yet have data on a specific measure doesn't mean we can't discuss why that measure is significant and worth our attention.
It's very clearly not providing an opinion guised as a question. It suggests that it could go up or down, and concludes that it is something to watch out for, because these are two variables very likely to be connected.
I don't know if beer has any special rules regarding it's taxation, but assuming it doesn't and knowing the beer craziness here in Colorado, I'm not too concerned.
Furthermore, if we finally killed our remaining blue laws (Only one location of any chain store can have alcohol in the state) I'd imagine the alcohol revenue would bump back up.
"A key question about the public health impact of legal marijuana is how does it change alcohol consumption patterns. To the extent that legal marijuana displaces legal booze purchases, you're going to see an offsetting decline in alcohol tax revenue. Which would be fine—a big win for public health, in fact—but not quite the financial bounty states may be hoping for. Alternatively, if legal pot leads to a complementary surge in beer drinking, you'll have lots of tax revenue but potentially large problems."
So we don't have any evidence or idea if this will affect booze sales, but you know, it could! Also, if it doesn't, there could be other problems, just in general for people...