Joint Resolution: Taxing Pot Just Makes Cents

[Ganjarden]

It's time to legalize marijuana, tax it to death, then let struggling Joe Citizen - instead of Joe Dope Dealer - reap the pot profits.

The most popular question at President Obama's town hall meeting Thursday? Whether legalizing marijuana would help the economy and create jobs. You know: Pottery Barn goes Pottery Bong.

Now the pot posse may have stacked the e-mail deck. Still Obama, who once wanted to decriminalize pot, laughed off the inquiries. "I don't know what this says about the online audience," he quipped, then did his post-election about-face. "No, I don't think this would be a good strategy."

Actually, it would be a very good strategy. He's wrong. Enough already with these ancient mariner moralizers like ex-drug czar Bill Bennett, who preached reefer madness while gambling millions in Vegas and smoking two packs a day. A different generation's in charge now. Millions of Americans understand that you can get stoned in high school, in college, every post-collegiate Saturday night, yet remain a responsible, upstanding, taxpayer. They know because they've done it.

Ignoring hysterical politicians and law enforcement types around here, Massachusetts voted nearly two to one in November to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana. Has your neighborhood gone to pot? If we took the next step - legalize and tax it - we might not need toll hikes or 19-cent gas tax hikes and they'd surely be hiring at "Roach Brothers," or "Best Buds," or maybe even, I can't resist, "Restoration Weed-Wear."

If we legalized nationwide, we'd save billions immediately in enforcement and jailing costs. We'd reap many billions more per year in taxes. When Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron published his legalize-pot tax estimates in 2005, more than 500 professional economists, including Milton Friedman, signed on.

Miron was on CNN this week discussing the horrific drug war on the Mexico/U.S. border. He's long argued that violence is the inevitable norm in illegal, not legal, markets, whether in drugs, gambling, prostitution, or alcohol. We just never learn.

But legalizing pot isn't only about money. It's about our ridiculous citizen passivity. Why do we let congressional liars and thieves dictate what we can do, responsibly, in our living rooms? Who are they to take away our children's student loans over a joint?

NORML (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) typically gets about $900 a day in online donations. Thursday and Friday, they got $3,500 each day.

"By every possible metric I can employ," said NORML's executive director, Allen St. Pierre, "these last 24 hours have been the busiest I've seen."

Though St. Pierre was disappointed with Obama's flip-flop Thursday, he also knows the president could be his best advertisement. You may not like Obama's politics, but nobody would argue that pot-smoking and co*aine-snorting scrambled Obama's brain.


News Hawk- Ganjarden 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: Boston Herald
Author: Margery Eagan
Contact: Boston Herald
Copyright: 2009 Boston Herald and Herald Media
Website: Joint Resolution: Taxing Pot Just Makes Cents

 

[starchild2012]

First of all, any idea endorsed by Milton Friedman automatically means privitization of said industry, and the profits would go to Joe the Few, not Joe the Many. (see "The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Kline) The tobacco giants have the machinery in place to completely dominate the marketplace within hours of legalization, and the tax per pack would be absorbed and unaccounted for, much the same way as cigarettes. Not to mention the millions of dollars wasted in unnecessary political theater.

Since Babylonian times it has been demonstrated that a free market economy needs a flowing undercurrent for balance, a cash based system. Legalization would only add stress to that current, eventually dam the flow, and degrade the product.

Obama is right, legalization and taxation of pot is not good strategy.

 

[Paladin]

First of all, any idea endorsed by Milton Friedman automatically means privitization of said industry, and the profits would go to Joe the Few, not Joe the Many. (see "The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Kline) The tobacco giants have the machinery in place to completely dominate the marketplace within hours of legalization, and the tax per pack would be absorbed and unaccounted for, much the same way as cigarettes. Not to mention the millions of dollars wasted in unnecessary political theater.

Since Babylonian times it has been demonstrated that a free market economy needs a flowing undercurrent for balance, a cash based system. Legalization would only add stress to that current, eventually dam the flow, and degrade the product.

Obama is right, legalization and taxation of pot is not good strategy.
Obamma is only half right when he states that legalization and taxation is not a good strategy. Legalization is good .... Taxation = bad ! If the weed were legal ... to grow and consume ... who wouldn't just grow their own ? Why should anyone have to pay the government( taxation ) in order to do something that they would have every right to do for themselves ?

 

[Paladin]

It's time to legalize marijuana, tax it to death, then let struggling Joe Citizen - instead of Joe Dope Dealer - reap the pot profits.

The most popular question at President Obama's town hall meeting Thursday? Whether legalizing marijuana would help the economy and create jobs. You know: Pottery Barn goes Pottery Bong.

Now the pot posse may have stacked the e-mail deck. Still Obama, who once wanted to decriminalize pot, laughed off the inquiries. "I don't know what this says about the online audience," he quipped, then did his post-election about-face. "No, I don't think this would be a good strategy."

Actually, it would be a very good strategy. He's wrong. Enough already with these ancient mariner moralizers like ex-drug czar Bill Bennett, who preached reefer madness while gambling millions in Vegas and smoking two packs a day. A different generation's in charge now. Millions of Americans understand that you can get stoned in high school, in college, every post-collegiate Saturday night, yet remain a responsible, upstanding, taxpayer. They know because they've done it.

Ignoring hysterical politicians and law enforcement types around here, Massachusetts voted nearly two to one in November to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana. Has your neighborhood gone to pot? If we took the next step - legalize and tax it - we might not need toll hikes or 19-cent gas tax hikes and they'd surely be hiring at "Roach Brothers," or "Best Buds," or maybe even, I can't resist, "Restoration Weed-Wear."

If we legalized nationwide, we'd save billions immediately in enforcement and jailing costs. We'd reap many billions more per year in taxes. When Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron published his legalize-pot tax estimates in 2005, more than 500 professional economists, including Milton Friedman, signed on.

Miron was on CNN this week discussing the horrific drug war on the Mexico/U.S. border. He's long argued that violence is the inevitable norm in illegal, not legal, markets, whether in drugs, gambling, prostitution, or alcohol. We just never learn.

But legalizing pot isn't only about money. It's about our ridiculous citizen passivity. Why do we let congressional liars and thieves dictate what we can do, responsibly, in our living rooms? Who are they to take away our children's student loans over a joint?

NORML (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) typically gets about $900 a day in online donations. Thursday and Friday, they got $3,500 each day.

"By every possible metric I can employ," said NORML's executive director, Allen St. Pierre, "these last 24 hours have been the busiest I've seen."

Though St. Pierre was disappointed with Obama's flip-flop Thursday, he also knows the president could be his best advertisement. You may not like Obama's politics, but nobody would argue that pot-smoking and co*aine-snorting scrambled Obama's brain.


News Hawk- Ganjarden 420 MAGAZINE ® - Medical Marijuana Publication & Social Networking
Source: Boston Herald
Author: Margery Eagan
Contact: Boston Herald
Copyright: 2009 Boston Herald and Herald Media
Website: Joint Resolution: Taxing Pot Just Makes Cents

That's all good and fine ... unless struggleing Joe is also a consumer of weed . What's the differance between paying one set of criminals over the other ? The only differance between organized crime and the federal government is that one considerably dwarfs the other in size and scope .