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Oakland becomes first city to tax pot
By a landslide today, Oakland became the first U.S. city to tax medical marijuana. Some 80 percent of voters voted to levy a 1.8 gross receipts tax on medical marijuana dispensaries. Like other cities, Oakland is facing a deficit and in need of the tax revenue.
Paul Chabot of the Coalition for the Drug Free California was one of the few dissenting voices:
The taxation of a federally unlawful drug is just not something that the community should accept. … With the state in dire straits in finances and the country looking for ways to pay down debt, looking at illegal drugs is the absolute wrong thing to do.
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back to top27 Comments to “Oakland becomes first city to tax pot”
We used to live in Ukiah, CA, 100 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Mendocino, County. Circa 1998, a ballot measure was circulated allowing for medicinal use of marijuana. I phoned an oncologist in my family and asked if I should vote yes. Who wants to add to the suffering of cancer patients?
She told me, emphatically, that there is no medically-needed basis for marijuana use. “Those are just people looking for an excuse to smoke pot. There are many excellent meds out there to relieve pain, I prescribe them all the time. No one needs pot.”
So I voted no. 60% of the folks in Mendocino County voted “yes” and medicinal marijuana was legal–you couldn’t buy it, but you could grow it.
Eleven years later, eight years after we left, the drop-out rate at the high school is soaring. Unemployment is high. Crime is rampant. When you walk down the streets of quaint Ukiah, you see yards filled with marijuana plants. The scent wafts down the street. “It’s not a fun place to live anymore,” my friends tell me.
For years, boy scouts and electric company workers have had to be extremely careful when hiking in the back country–too many illegal patches of marijuana and armed guards watching over them.
Meth lab “proprietors” have poisoned state park lands with their chemicals. Drug wealth displays itself in striking ways.
Here in broken California, many people are suggesting taxing pot is the best way to get the underground economy onto the economic rolls–at least to get “some” money out of it. It’s a pragmatic solution, yet . . .
Oakland already has serious problems. I shake my head. Revival–changed hearts–seems the only real solution that will last, to me
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Just saying–
Perhaps if marijuana were legalized and regulated like tobacco and alcohol, the growers would not have to have armed guards. Perhaps if it were legal, then states could tax it as they do cigarettes and liquor. We would still have the abuse problems, but at least the state would have the revenue. But then, the state would probably misappropriate the revenue just like it does now, sop the problem would be the same or worse. And the black marketeers wouls still do a lot of business as they do with tobacco and alcohol.
As Michelle writes above, only a true Holy Spirit revival of the hearts of men will help.
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Marijuana is worse for you than tobacco and alcohol combined. It is more highly addictive, and is often a gateway drug.
Thus says my health teacher. So why do they let it be legal in some places? It makes the school system look foolish (Not that they need any help!), and undermines what honest anti-drug people try to teach teens.
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New and better ways to to feed the starving tax man.
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What are the odds that people willing to risk imprisonment or worse for the vast profits from dealing drugs would voluntarily give up large sums of money to avoid tax audits?
What are the odds that people who use or deal drugs illegally would be willing to incriminate themselves to avoid tax problems?
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opinionated teen,
I doubt your health teacher really knows what he or she is talking about. No offense.
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Ken’s point is well taken.
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Ummmmm, Ken, they’re taxing legal medical marijuana sales. Not illegal drug deals.
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The “war on drugs” hasn’t worked. Period. The more I look at the vast sums expended on detection, prosecution, incarceration, probation etc, the more I realize we have to re-think the whole thing.
In the county I used to live in, they had a really active DARE program–I happened to see two of the presentations.
Even though I already couldn’t begin to think like an eigth grader back then, I thought they were really effective.
Oh well, maybe after we “fix” health care…
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Rostin: normally, I would agree with you. But Ms. Upton is one of the few health teachers who actually knows her subject.
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Ken @#5- You are bringing a logical/obvious argument to the table. That is not allowed when politicians are involved.
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Seems like a typical example of crocodile tears professing compassion for the suffering for the purpose of legalizing marijuana for them to relieve their pain, on one hand, and then turning on a dime to tax them suckers who buy it and smoke it. It’s usually about the money, people.
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Joel-
Off your game today? You forgot to complain that it’s MARXIST SOCIALISM to make sick people to pay $1.80 tax on a hundred dollar bag of weed!
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If it’s illegal to buy and illegal to sell, where do the taxes come from?
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It’s not illegal.
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RPN,
Do they carry it at the local DRUG STORE?
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Using the same licensing in place for tobacco and alcohol, marijuana should be legalized and taxed.
Marijuana is worse for you than tobacco and alcohol combined. It is more highly addictive, and is often a gateway drug.
Speaking from “stoner” nation (Canada has the highest marijuana use in the developed world) and as a middle school health teacher, the above statement is not only wrong but if taught in health is harmful. When teaching drug use and abuse in health class, I focus on the carcinogenic nature of smoking marijauna. If I was to use the above quote, my class would not take me seriously. Marijuana has some, admittedly overstated, medicinal qualities, is not addictive, and is not a gateway drug. Although Canadians have a high marijuana use, they have far lower use of “harder” drugs than Americans and Europeans.
By being honest, students will take health class more seriously then if they were preached to.
As for the harm caused by legalization, the Dutch have a fairly low rate of marijuana use.
http://osgoode.yorku.ca/media2.nsf/83303ffe5af03ed585256ae6005379c9/1133e17b06cf70b6852573150056d35a!OpenDocument
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Paul Chabot: The taxation of a federally unlawful drug is just not something that the community should accept. …
Frank: The very concept of a “federally unlawful drug” is not something that any community should accept, for it turns the Bill of Rights — particularly the 9th and 10th Amendments — on its head.
Some seventy-five years after abandoning (one aspect of) “the noble experiment,” we are still a nation of rank prohibitionists.
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What’s more, this isn’t even an issue of recreational drug use, but of the relationship between a patient and his doctor.
What, the FedGov knows more about what’s “bad” for a patient needs than his doctor?
What compatibility does this idea have with either our Founders or (for the Christian) Scripture?
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And incidentally, the Oregon Senate just passed SB676, permitting the farming of industrial hemp — a vital and useful crop which is demonstrably not marijuana (medical or otherwise). It moves to the house next, and OR’s governor said he would sign the bill into law if passed.
So a Q. for conservative Christian prohibitionists: What legitimate moral or legal reason does the FedGov have for telling farmers it cannot grow a legitimate, non-psychoactive crop — particularly when six states so far (remember the states?) would permit it?
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Frank –
To answer with a disparate quip – The New Deal and because it can (thinking of Romans 13, too).
As I’m sure you know,in the 30’s the Fed paid farmers to plough their fields under, spill their milk, burn their corn and wheat and the likes in order to “raise” the price of farm commodities.
They at least ought to offer pay the farmers for not growing industrial hemp if the farmers can demonstrate somehow what the cash value of their crops would be and how the hemp would be utilized.
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“Do they carry it at the local DRUG STORE?”
Pretty much. You get a prescription from your doctor and go to a licensed dispensary to fill it. Now the dispensary pays a nominal tax on gross sales. Seems fair enough. Maybe you could read the article? Nah.
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Here are two recent articles from the Spokesman-Review re. the legal status of medical marijuana users and dispensaries here in Spokane:
Pot establishing medicinal niche
Marijuana dispensaries’ legal status remain in limbo
June 24, 2009
Pot’s legal ambiguity clouds enforcement
Medical marijuana law comes with slew of concerns for patients, officers
June 28, 2009
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OldHickory68,
Before I go off on what could very well be an unnecessary rant (
), I’d be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on how Romans 13 applies to marijuana use — whether medical or recreational — and the cultivation of industrial hemp.
I’ll tip my hand a wee bit here: I don’t think Romans 13 or Matthew 22:21 (”Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s “) are anything like the Statist cartes blanche that so many of my fellow believers seem to think they are.
IOW, something isn’t Caesar’s just because he says it is.
Thoughts?
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OldHickory,
May I just assume, then, that your “disparate quip” re. Romans 13 was offered with tongue planted firmly in cheek?
I hope I’m right, because you haven’t otherwise struck me as a blind authoritarian!
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Frank-
I apologize for having skipped your earlier comment. I did so thinking this is a discussion about California and you were talking about Washington state where it is also legal. Are you aware that back in March, the Obama administration rightly said it will not raid medical marijuana dispensaries?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/us/19holder.html
To tip my hand too, I think marijuana laws are a big waste of tax payer money.
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Marijuana is worse for you than tobacco and alcohol combined. It is more highly addictive, and is often a gateway drug.
I’m sorry, but that doesn’t even makes sense. Most all charts agree that Heroin is the most addictive drug followed by nicotine. (crack and cocaine are in there somewhere too)
And alcohol causes terrible physical problems and chemical dependence. They even have a name for alcohol withdrawal: DTs, delirium tremens. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens
Try to find the name of what happens when you withdraw from marijuana (don’t waste too much time looking…) Or start looking at the worst side affects of the most prescribed legal drugs.
For example, acetaminophen/paracetamol (Tylenol and other brands) is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the US.
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