[Pontiac]

Grow tobbacco. Soon to be as profitable as illegal marijuana on the black market. What will be the next consumer item taxed specifically to support government health care?

How about marijuana?

Make it legal and tax it like alcohol or tobacco.

Put a $50 per ounce tax on marijuana and it would be cheaper to the user and it would take the profits out of the hands of organized crime (if you don’t consider government organized crime that is).

[o_zarkman44]

Why tax any consumer item so to feed the Fed appetite for control of anything?

I don’t work my ass off to feed the Fed Piggy Bank so they can feed and nurture the unproductive, lazy, and irrsponsible.

[merican]

“Put a $50 per ounce tax on marijuana and it would be cheaper to the user and it would take the profits out of the hands of organized crime (if you don’t consider government organized crime that is). “

In my area Mexican pot goes for about $60 to $80 an ounce, less if people have really good connections. A $50 an ounce tax would be too high here for that dirt cheap low grade product, which is what most pot smokers around here use because they don't want to pay several times as much for fancy indoor grown stuff. I'm all for legalizing pot though. I think they should start with just regular sales taxes though to knock out the black market and then slowly start adding in excises as legal growers and distributors get their systems dialed in and competition drives the prices down to a fraction of what they are today. Eventually what they could do is tax it at different rates for low potency and high potency product, have two or three categories taxed at different rates. It will get so cheap that it won't cost that much more than tobacco in bulk wholesale and there will be a lot of room for taxes. High taxes would be the only thing that could keep the cost to consumers anywhere close to what they pay today. They just need to be mindful that if they go too high and prices to consumers start getting higher than they are today in the black market that they will encourage a organized crime to produce and sell black market marijuana and that would negate much of the benefit of legalization.

[mysterio]

Put a $50 per ounce tax on marijuana

Too large a tax. There would still be a black market. Just legalize it and tax it normally and there will be tons of new revenue.

[Normal4me]

How about we just STOP sending our money to the government! Taxing anything to support another group of people is Socialism. I don’t have children by choice so why should I be taxed to take care of some snotty nosed brat?

Taxing pot is just plain stupid. It’s like taxing welfare recipients on their illegal weapons in their government housing. Think they are going to pay voluntarily?

[Clinging Bitterly]

Now we're talkin’.

I say put a 53% tax on Mountain Dew and Swedish cars.

Or how about guns? It's for the children.