If it were taxed and legal, the "$2.6 billion worth" of plants they seized would be worth $100,000 or so, so there's not quite as much tax revenue as it first appears.
What we really need to do is get POISON IVY declared a schedule I drug, so that they can spend billions of dollars a year removing it from my back yard. At least then I'd be getting something useful for my tax money.
I gotta disagree. Your figure works out to only 3%. Local sales tax is more than twice that (here in NC) and that's before income tax on the profit and withholding tax on employees of the growers (if it was legal). The article only lists the seized pot in Ca. for Jan. to Aug. of this year only. I'll look for the estimates for national crop figures but nation wide, pot is our nations leading cash crop.