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!
