Joke used to be that the only useful thing that California ever contributed to civilization was the traffic concept of “Right Turn on Red” - something that came out of the energy crisis of thirty years ago that the yahoos and bozos in Washington never really got around to fixing.
Now the second most liberal city in California – Oakland has raised taxes on “Medical Maryjuana” sales which is becoming a growth industry in that state.
Marijuana Supporters Welcome a Tax Increase
But sure enough, supporters of medical marijuana were pleasantly pleased Wednesday after Oakland voters overwhelmingly approved a huge tax increase — 15 times the former rate — on sales at the city’s handful of permitted medical marijuana dispensaries.Marijuana is the correct spelling here, shows you how hip and or illiterate I really am or am not.
Believed to be the first of its kind, Measure F received nearly 80 percent of the vote, a landslide that pot professionals hailed as a significant step in the legitimization of the cannabis industry.
The PR push for Medical Marijuana was that it helped Chemotherapy patients control nausea and increase appetite to help in cancer recovery. On the news I saw a dude who was getting his prescribed Maryjane to help out with seasonal allergies. How smoking this stuff and putting smoke into your sinuses can help your allergies is beyond me. Maybe he puts it in brownies. Whatever.
The genie is out of the bottle. California with its medieval way of doing things with voter approved initiatives is basically bankrupt and unable to meet its bills. Tax on Medical Marijuana is likely going $tatewide soon and legal use is not far behind.
Perhaps with California creating this new growth industry, perhaps we can begin to abandon the largest penal system in the world – Prison building (taxpayer paid free housing for all those evil, sinful drug dealers), an American growth industry from the eighties and nineties and into the naughts.
Human nature is human nature. Gambling, sex for money, drug use are going to happen whether you legislate for or against it.
It is a Cultural Christian (Secular) Country. Which means that catering to sin (or forgiveness thereof ) and not virtue is big business. As such, a sin tax is appropriate in order to forgive the sinful use of a natural product untouched as yet by the Pharmaceutical industry.
In any case, no matter where you may feeble-ly stand on these issues - for common sense sake, legalize the evil weed – Marijuana – and like alcohol and nicotine, tax the hell out it!
7 comments:
Addiction to booze and drugs are at the root of most of the prison populations troubles. Legalizing grass on it's own and taxing it does not solve any problems except financial gain for the powers that be. Sin taxes are legal extortion and only cut into the criminal underworlds profits. Do I have a solution..no I don't but this isn't the answer either. Grass impares judgement as well as booze. We still need to hold people responsible for their actions and that means incarceration for the ones who have no self control. I don't see it really solving our prison overpopulation problems.
Personal possession statutes need to be repealed obviously but if your caught selling..then all bets are off as you are circumventing the law and it's purpose to snuff out illegal/criminal profiteering.
One decades morality is the next decade's so called tax bonus. What Calif. does - like right turn on red - dictates or leads the way for the rest of the nation.
I have this decades old belief that the tough, mandatory, Rockefeller drug Laws were the basis of the need for more prisons which now all seem to be drifting into "for profit" territory. One monster or big problem begets another.
Me. I never could learn to inhale so I won't be paying any new taxes but I am going to have to be more careful and drive more defensively on the road should California set the new standards in taxed "sin"/drug use.
Then we need to repeal the mandatory sentencing policies as that is a step in the right direction as it then gives judges once again the power to do their job and not be forced into a sentence that they know is wrong! People aren't doing hard time for grass unless they are importing it or selling it to sustain their own addiction to other more serious drugs. No easy answers to a cultural problem that throwing money at it solves nothing.
Present culture says build more prisons to make us feel safe. Anybody who doesn't espouse a get tough on crime stance is doomed to political failure. Prison is now the answer to all our social ills that once were the province of social agencies/the church/the community. Now the homeless and the mentally ill and retarded go to prison. Some day they will come for you and me..then what?
The American Town Square of yester year had a lot of nuts and bolts to adjust from time to time but you knew and respected your neighbor, like him/her or not – people lost in the system in the last 40 years partially owes itself to so many unique American factors. Whether in the 21st century we can get back to that other time is a matter of heart and more truly a matter of soul.
Can we go back in time and/or thought? Probably not but there are battles that can be fought but it is like sticking your finger in a leaking dike! Small victories are achievable by every individual IF they want to make a difference in another persons life and their own. We've really screwed up creation..human nature marches on.
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