Posted on 10/15/2010 9:31:11 AM PDT by OneVike
Next month on election day, Californians will have the chance to legalize marijuana for the specific purpose of raising revenues via taxes. Think about that for a moment: legalizing a dangerous product for the specific purpose of collecting more taxes. I guarantee you that the politicians will begin demonizing marijuana the moment the Secretary of State reports the initiative passed. By Christmas they will be telling the public how much revenue they will collect from taxing marijuana, and by next June they will be raising taxes on it to pay for the treatment of those who want to quit but cannot do so on their own. Then in the run-up to the 2012 election, the politicians, the MSM, Hollywood, and the music industry will claim we need to support an initiative to raise taxes on marijuana so that schools will have the funds needed to keep up with the states that spend 1/10 of what California spends per student. Let's be honest, we all knew that it would be just a matter of time before the same individuals who pushed to legalize medical marijuana would get enough signatures to put up a ballot initiative to legalize it without qualifiers. It is, however, a bit ironic when you consider that these same individuals have gone on a witch hunt against tobacco products.
The attack began over 50 years ago when the Surgeon General forced the tobacco companies to label their products with a warning to the user about the health risks of smoking. Fifty years later there are now some communities in California that have gotten so militant in their anti-smoking campaigns that they are even considering passing ordinances that would ban smoking in private homes. That begs the question, "If smoking tobacco is so harmful to society that we need to ban it from being smoked even in the privacy of one's home, then why legalize a drug that scientific studies have proven is upwards of five times more harmful to the body than tobacco?"
A 2007 study by the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand found that smoking one marijuana joint is equal to smoking five cigarettes at the same time. And there are numerous other medical reasons that should keep such a drug from being legalized. Besides having over 400 chemicals that have been identified in the plant, over 2,000 more chemicals are generated when cannabis is set on fire and smoked. That's 2,000 toxic chemicals invading the blood stream though.....
(Excerpt) Read more at ChicoER
The results of this are entirely unpredictable, as far as I’m concerned. Some good, some bad.
First, the price of pot will likely decline; whatever taxes are anticipated from the legalized trade in pot are likely to be overstated. It may be true that fewer law enforcement resources will need to be brought to bear upon what would no longer be a crime, but it is really stetching the bounds of credulity to think that police departments would ever admit that.
We’ll have a load more doped-up drivers on the road. This will probably increase insurance rates for everyone.
I just don’t find it credible that anyone can predict the outcome of legalizing the type of pot use this proposition advocates.
I put this together as an argument for why Proposition 19 should not be passed in Ca. Prop 19 would legalize marijuana. For those of who live in Ca, maybe it will help you in your efforts to convince your friends or relatives who may be in favor of the initiative as to why they need to vote against it.....
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A disturbing trend that has been consistent through the years is the way adults who smoke marijuana do so with little regard to the effect it has on their children. Is it any wonder that the age of marijuana smokers has consistently trended towards a younger age to the point that
children as young as seven years old are now smoking pot. It's my opinion that this is a major reason why 360,000 of the people who checked into drug treatment programs in 2007 reportedly did so to get help with their addiction to marijuana. It does not help those trying to quit that the proponents for the legalization of marijuana are consistently downplaying the dangers of habitually using marijuana.
The article misses one point- after it’s taxed, then anyone growing it will eventually be seen as a tax evader.
The revenoo’ers will come around like DEA only dreamed of to catch, fine, and punish these tax dodgers with their gro-lites.
According to Regan if you want less of something just tax it!
Will taxing “maryjane” result in less of it? Quite possibly because local politicians will have a vested interest, tax income, to enforce the new laws. The drive for tax money is what lead to the repeal of prohibition in the early 1930s.
Could this approach finally lead to us winning the “war on drugs”? Everything we have tried to date has failed because the locals have no vested interest in enforcing the current laws. Perhaps the drive to get more money, tax based, will change the environment.
Dope for Kids Prop 19 will assure the supply.
Nearly all the pot will come from MS 13 and Mexican narco trafficking gangs.
It's going to be real fun when doper politicians order the cop to collect taxes from Mexican narcos, pretty much all the Mexican cops that tried this had their heads left on the city hall front lawn. The ones that didn't work for the gangs and kill the politicians that don't.
Coming soon to a California suburb near you.
You were too quick on the keyboard, see #9.
All I got out ot that is that tobacco should be illegal too.
Yea, I am at work in the office, and it’s slow. So I am monitoring the comments, but I will be gone soon. So I try to jump quick. Sometimes too quick.
Thanks for everything ;>)
You’re welcome.
Thanks for the ping!
I don’t think this bill will reduce the price of marijuana. I do not smoke it, but have it on pretty good authority that the price of Marijuana has remained steady since the passage of the Medical Marijuana bill. You can go to any clinic and get MMJ and you will pay the same price in any one of them.
How is it that when you increase competition, and remove the black market element from it, that the price continues to remain high and appear practically collusive? Because the majority of the trade continues to be supplied by the black market, namely, large criminal gangs that illegally grow Marijuana.
It is a contradiction in terms to “legalize MJ” and yet not allow the growth, distribution and sale of it. Nevertheless the MMJ bill enabled it so that some places doing business by some name can sell MMJ to some people who got a permit from some doctors. Very arbitrary and convoluted.
So now Prop 19 comes along to allow MJ to enter the full stream of commerce, and solely for the purpose of raising taxes off it. Yet it has virtually no provisions for the growth of MJ, the distribution of MJ, and/or the licensing of places that may sell it. This, the bill leaves to the municipalities with the exception that anyone can grow MJ plants on a 25 sq ft parcel of their own land or in their own closets.
That will not have any meaningful impact on price because it is not likely that people are going to start growing MJ let alone grow it successfully and in quantities that will rival commercial black market growers and smugglers. Furthermore, the first person to receive a permit from his/her city to grow large quantities of MJ will likely be the target of either the Federal Government, or more likely, a hit man from one of the large gangs that currently control the wholesale MJ trade.
I don’t think Prop 19 is the right bill. The motives are wrong, and offers a Machiavellian proposition to the people who want MJ decriminalized. Does the state need money? Yes. Does that justify allowing criminal gangs to sell their wares in 7-11 so we can tax it? No.
Maybe the pot growers will block it in the courts.
That would be too funny.
If so, then I can them getting help from the Mexican & Colombian drug cartels, and the Mexican government.
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