A marijuana tax is now funding $750 no-strings-attached monthly payments to families in New Mexico

I wonder how long before New Mexico Republicans draft a bill making use of tax money for UBI illegal.
- Like it says in the article this isn't a universal basic income as it is only given to 80 families
- Lmfao, 15 states already banned Ranked-Choice Voting 💀
  Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)#Where_is_RCV_used
  RCV trends: Four states ban RCV in 2025, bringing the number of states with bans to 15.
  
  I was so mad when they passed that amendment in my state. They used crumby wording to get people to vote for it. I'm still disappointed that this wording got approved to go on the ballot:
  A "yes" vote supported amending the state constitution to:
  provide that only U.S. citizens 18 years or older can vote, thereby prohibiting the state or local governments from allowing non-citizen voting; establish that each voter has one vote per issue or open seat; prohibit ranked-choice voting; and require plurality primary elections, where one winner advances to the general election.
  A "no" vote opposed this amendment, thereby maintaining that "all citizens of the United States" who are 18 years of age or older may vote in elections and that ranked-choice voting may be enacted at the local or state level via ordinance or state statute.
  TLDR: They said the amendment required proof of citizenship to vote, but that was already federally required. They then tacked on RCV to get it banned by amendment. >:(
- NM has its fascists firmly restrained.
  One of the few states where anyone right wing gets laughed out of the room.
  
  Move to NM; got it. Thanks. 😊
- This would be a great thing to do with victimless crime tax monies.
- Luckily new mexico is quite blue.

I am not a citizen of New Mexico, but I cannot begin to tell you how fulfilled I would feel to learn that my high was lifting others up somehow.
- Well said bro

We shouldn't need to be shaking down weed stores/smokers for basic human welfare. It's just robbing peter to pay paul.
Tax the billionaires, corporations, etc.
- More like we should threaten more Luigi’s to make them get in line. If people make it open season on the people harming this nation. Then they’ll be happy to start paying their share. Make billionaires scared again. Starting with that Nazi removed. Funny. You don’t know which Nazi billionaire I mean. Because there are so many.
- Yeah I am not super flush with cash but weed, which treats my ptsd symptoms so I can work, is expensive.

I've been saying for years governments need to switch from fighting drugs to taxing drugs. If you authorise growers with permits and sell under set conditions you can earn what criminals earn and also save loads of money on police. You'd probably still need law enforcement for the really hardcore stuff since it won't prevent regular addicts turning into junkies, but at least you have control over gateway drugs like weed and mdma in a similar way as you have control over alcohol and nicotine. The current system is broken and expensive. I am sober 8 years, I am not saving this because I think drugs are a good thing and am also not saying this so I can use drugs with less hassle.

Paywall
- I have yet to find a paywalled article, where putting archive.is/ in front of the link, doesn't solve that problem.
  Doing that for this article, gave me this link: https://archive.md/KBTlE
  Although in the case of this article, you'll have to request the desktop version, if you're using a phone, because otherwise their Read Next box will cover some of the text at the end.
  
  Thanks
- The Tesseract front end for lemmy lets you get one of several archive site links for any posted article with 2 clicks, if you haven’t tried it yet. I think your instance admin has to (install? enable?) it, but it’s worth it just for that IMO

What families are receiving it? Is it a qualification? Or a lottery.?
- The city first approved the $4.02 million basic income plan in March. City revenue from marijuana sales is contributing more than $2 million to that total, according to a city press release.
  The program is providing the $750 monthly payments to 80 families in two districts where students struggle with low academic performance. The city will also offer financial counseling to the families.
  So much for no strings attached.
  
  What strings are you referencing here? Is the financial counseling mandatory?
  Not everyone is eligible for this, but that's kind of a different issue.

You can buy a fair amount of decent weed for $750

HEY ILLINOIS GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER

Hear me out, cut out a bunch of middlemen and give me a shit ton of free weed.

Maybe I should move to New Mexico and let the dopers pay for my cooler drugs

Yeah, but does anybody want to talk about all the fucking pesticides that are in this government weed? Just Libturd Solutions. Don't get me wrong, I smoke weed. I'm just saying. Grow your own. Stop doing extracts. Vape if you want to be safe. Nothing like the Yankee managing perception making a good thing bad. But I guess I'll eat the slop off the floor because that's the only thing that I got.