T<\/span>he sunny Caribbean island of Puerto Rico is facing some dark financial times: Large companies fled the island for friendlier tax laws, creating a deficit that the resource-rich, industry-poor territory has been unable to fill. Puerto Ricans \u2014 about 45 percent of whom live at or below the poverty line \u2014 are following suit: The island\u2019s population has fallen by 400,000 people, to 3.4 million, in no small part because unemployment here (12 percent) is almost triple what it is back in the full-fledged USA (4.3 percent).<\/p>\n Above all, Puerto Rico is more than $74 billion in debt<\/a> to creditors it cannot pay and has $50 billion in pension obligations it cannot fulfill. There are assertions that up to half of the debt is \u201cillegal\u201d \u2014 the result of toxic Wall Street tricks of the kind that engineered the Great Recession \u2014 but the weight of the financial obligation remains.<\/p>\n Puerto Rico might be able to convince Congress to fix these ills, and perhaps even consider the territory for statehood, were voters there able to send someone to Congress or to vote in presidential elections. Taxation without representation, fiscal penury resulting in a form of indentured servitude \u2014 didn\u2019t conditions like these bring about significant change, somewhere and sometime else in America?<\/p>\n This is the atmosphere in which Puerto Ricans are considering drug-policy revolution, and looking to medical marijuana for the bailout that\u2019s not coming from banks or lawmakers on the mainland.<\/p>\n Two years ago, Puerto Rico legalized medical marijuana by executive decree \u2014 a trick nobody in the 50 states would dare try \u2014 and earlier this summer, Gov. Ricardo Rossello signed another order authorizing a legal framework for a medical-marijuana industry. Cultivation facilities, processing centers, and dispensaries are all now legal.<\/p>\n According to the island\u2019s treasury secretary, a legal marijuana industry could generate up to $100 million a year and create thousands of jobs. As attorney Goodwin Aldarondo, president of Puerto Rico Legal Marijuana, told Fox Business<\/a>, everybody\u2019s banking on weed to be Puerto Rico\u2019s savior.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the only viable alternative we have to solve the economic situation,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been many, many years since Puerto Rico has had a new industry.\u201d<\/p>\n This is the line heard all over the mainland U.S., where marijuana tax revenues have helped Colorado towns balance budgets and build new civic institutions and give failing California counties new hope of the same. But while cannabis may be able to relieve chronic pain and cure cancer, Puerto Rico\u2019s many woes may be too big a challenge for even the magic plant to solve.<\/p>\n For weed to generate massive sales tax revenue, there needs to be massive sales. There are only 9,000 medical marijuana patients on the island, Fox Business noted \u2014 \u00a0a tiny fraction of the 3.4 million people there \u2014 and store-bought cannabis is expensive, a luxury for people in poverty.<\/p>\n Unless the drug is outright legalized and becomes part of the island\u2019s tourism economy, there isn\u2019t much realistic hope for a massive market expansion of the kind enjoyed in Colorado, Oregon, Washington and other legal states.<\/p>\n Speaking of Colorado: With legal weed fueling tourism, and with two million more residents than Puerto Rico, cannabis sales taxes netted \u201conly\u201d $200 million last year. With fewer people and far fewer potential customers, it\u2019s not clear how Puerto Rico can hope to net up to half that haul.<\/p>\n Something more will need to be done. Something more drastic \u2014 more freeing. More legalizing, one could say. If the mainland is content to leave Puerto Rico to its own devices, it\u2019s not a far stretch to imagine the island styling itself as the world\u2019s cannabis-friendly tropical island destination out of pure economic necessity.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you think legal cannabis tourism can save Puerto Rico\u2019s economy?<\/p>\n The post Could Cannabis Tourism Save Puerto Rico\u2019s Economy?<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Puerto Rico is drowning in a sea of debt more than $74 billion deep, and many on the Caribbean island see legal cannabis as a potential lifeline. The sunny Caribbean island of Puerto Rico is facing some dark financial times: Large companies fled the island for friendlier tax laws, creatingContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,80,94,170,65,417,421,541],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18508,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18507\/revisions\/18508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Could Cannabis Tourism Save Puerto Rico\u2019s Economy?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"