An odd tidbit crossed my vision the other day about how Colorado has a law that bans the use of residential rain barrels.
In other words, if you live in this particular state you are not allowed to collect rain for your own use. Try as I might, I can’t seem to find out why this law was passed in the first place. Rain is rain and it will fall where-ever it chooses. Besides their Fifth Amendment establishes property rights and if rain falls on your property then isn’t the water is yours by right? … Does that make sense?
The reason I saw this snippet of news was because apparently there are some changes in the wind, well that’s if it can get passed through the Republican-led Senate, (naturally it’s the Democrats leading the charge).
Surely the good citizens of Colorado should be able to catch the rain and use it to water their tomatoes or their marijuana plants.
Speaking of which. Colorado was the first state to legalize marijuana fully, (not just for medicine), and the industry is booming. In fact, the tax that has been collected has actually gone over the capped amount of tax which, by law, is allowed to be collected at any one time.
This meant that the good people of Colorado are supposed to be paid back the excess. (I believe the Republicans and Democrats are still arguing about whether that should happen – what’s new!)
In 2015 sales were more than $996 million – geez, that’s nearly a billion which means that the tax was more than $135 million.
O.k. so their population is a bit more than ours here in N.Z. – coming in at 5.35 million, but holy camoly, even if we got a tax increase of 100 million, imagine what that would accomplish here.
So what are they doing with all that extra money?
- Apparently, $40 million is for school constructions, marijuana education and prevention campaigns.
- Some even going to bullying prevention.
- Money is spent on preventing school drop-outs and for youth mentoring services.
- Then there’s the poison control centres that need money and substance abuse screening, intervention and referral.
- Tack onto that money for substance abuse treatment
- And there’s a bit of money for roadside impaired-driving enforcement training for peace officers.
- There’s also money going to the Future Farmers of America and the 4-H programs which are programs designed for youth to teach leadership etc.
So you can see, the money is being channelled to the youth of Colorado, which, I think is excellent. Imagine what we’d achieve if we did the same with our youth????
Bloody hell, I’ve gone off-topic again.
My point is that here is this forward-thinking State and they are denying their citizens the basic right of being able to collect water …. go figure!
Feel free to comment, would love to hear (well read) what you think.
