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Update - May 18, 2009: A year and a half later, Gov. Arnold Schwarzengger is now willing to take this idea to the store.
While Sacramento scrambles to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for public transportation and other programs around the state, a serious group of underground marijuana professionals are offering to pay at least a billion dollars in taxes, if only California would legalize pot.
A coalition of California marijuana growers and dealers has offered Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger one billion dollars to solve the current state budget crisis. The group, calling itself Let Us Pay Taxes makes the offer through its web site LetUsPayTaxes.com. The offer comes at a time when the California legislature is deadlocked on a new budget and California has stopped issuing checks for vitally needed social services. Legislators are currently arguing over which programs will be cut in order to balance the budget.One thing the Prop 215 medical marijuana dispensary craze has shown - people are willing to pay far more for legal marijuana than ever expected.“It is ridiculous that California can’t pay its bills,” said spokesman Clifford Schaffer. “It is a tragedy that they will cut badly needed services and programs such as medical care for the elderly and prison drug treatment when the money to fund all these programs and more is there and available. Everyone who is currently waiting for a check from the state should be enraged at this foolishness.”
Regulation and taxation of marijuana could produce six billion dollars in additional tax revenue, according to economic studies linked from their web site LetUsPayTaxes.com. In addition, it could save up to ten billion dollars in enforcement costs. “That is a conservative estimate,” said Schaffer. “By other estimates, the revenues could be five times that. The economists are with us all the way on this one. Marijuana prohibition is an economic disaster.”
Our sources tell us that a bag of high quality "reefer" that would be sold on the street for $50 for an eighth of an ounce was being sold for $75-80 in most dispensaries.
If there was a $25 tax on an eighth of an ounce of marijuana, like there seems to be on medical marijuana, the government would reap $3,200 per pound in taxes. To make $1 billion in taxes, California would have to sell about 320,000 pounds of the green stuff, the equivalent of 14 tons.
It seems like a lot of pot until you realize that every week it seems theres a story of a ton of weed being discovered in a truck over here or a half ton of weed being nabbed by the cops over there. Which makes us assume that there are tons and tons of marijuana being smoked and sold every day. Thus, the theory that pot could save Cali could be true.
Too bad we have a Governor in office who was perfectly happy smoking weed when he was younger, and saw first hand that it did not hinder him from achieving wild success, but who now has no interest in sharing that experience regardless of what the people who he was elected to represent think, and regardless of the fact that the harmless plant could very well save the world - or at least the budget.
Political girlie men are the worst.
photo by The Mad Pothead via flickr
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It's true, though. It would also cut down on crime if it were taxed/regulated by the gov't.
Do it, and maybe we can have our transportation funding back, Mr. Governor...
It's totally a matter of time...
This is just too good an idea to be buried and un-realized forever.
I think the only reason marijuana *ever* leads to other drugs is because you have to get to know dealers and a specific 'underground' culture to get it. If it were sold in stores this issue would disappear.
Not sure what crime it would cut down on, other than the actual crime of dealing pot, which wouldn't be a crime anymore... it's not like people are mugging old ladies to fill their bongs, ya know.
Does anybody else think a $25 tax per eighth is a little high?
Or...do I just smoke too much pot?
Someone recently told me that the state (or perhaps city) already taxes the weed sold at dispensaries. Are we talking about a special tax or simply sales tax (cuz last time checked real prescriptions from CVS or Rite-Aid are not subject to sales tax). The person who told me this was arguing that regardless of the backlash against the dispensaries (because the law is written so loosely currently any jackass can get a scrip if they have the $)the government will fight to keep them open simply because of the revenue it brings in. Anyone know if this is true?
Yes, BOE in their infinite wisdom see fit to charge sales tax on medicinal Cannabis. So in effect-- the only people paying sales tax on the #1 agricultural product in the country are the ill. Sick, isn't that?
Hulled food-grade hemp seed (imported from Canada) costs about six dollars a pound. The reason pot costs significantly more than that is prohibition, and "criminals" take in all that additional money.
It is long past time to abolish prohibition and end the abominable injustice and wasted funds.
--Richard Steeb, San Jose
FYI your math is off by a factor of 10. You would need approx 142 MT not 14 MT to reach $1 B but I am sure other people realized this too.
Thanks, Richard. That is indeed SICK.
If you lived in Kansas as I do you would feel like you're paying those taxes by way of the price of smoke around here. Here though is a monopoly of the law that makes so much from the sales just to let it continue..... Is that a rip off??
...I agree that it is a brilliant idea, but that high of a tax?? That's sinful. I wouldn't mind paying maybe $5, but I wouldn't pay any more. F**k that, I'd rather purchase it illegally for $50 per eighth instead of $75-80. That's ridiculous.
Um well if we can legally buy it why can't we then grow our own supply? Not trying to come up with a reason to be negative but how do you make a plant, which is a weed, illegal. There will always be a market for it I guess but @ those prices I would rather grow my own...