Marijuana has been legal in a handful of U.S. states for a few years now. For the most part, the outcome of the people legalizing weed has been overwhelmingly positive. The windfall from weed-based tax revenues have allowed states to bolster funds for various institutional and fringe programs that once had to fight for funding, face underfunding, or receive no funding at all. All of a sudden states with legal weed are like the rich uncles of this country, but they splash money around on infrastructure rather than jet skis.
Colorado has decided to use a piece of the marijuana tax brownie on a new system to fight bullying in its schools. Their new program will allocate roughly $2.9 million in surplus tax dollars to bullying prevention grants offered to approximately 50 schools.” That’s a fair chunk of change. Schools will be able to apply for a grant that’ll pay out approximately $40,000, so that the schools are able to hire bullying prevention coaches and form parent and teacher committees to deal with bullying on their campus. Colorado’s response to retraining schools and parents to deal with bullying is in response to the evolving view that blanket punishments to negative behavior is not useful. Instead they’ll address why the bullying is happening and work from there.
Don’t expect bullying just to stop because Colorado is putting money into the system. It’ll still take work, education, and understanding. But at the very least thanks to marijuana, the money is there to take a step in the right direction.
(Via Time)
