President Obama, Governor Schwarzenegger and other esteemed politicos may routinely distance themselves from the potential windfall that would accompany legalizing and taxing cannabis, but amid California's
latest and deepest financial crisis the state Board of Equalization
has tagged a whopping revenue figure to such a notion.
As Eric Bailey blogs on the LA Times' L.A. Now site, “a tax on pot sales in California could fetch as much as $1.4
billion, according to the board's analysis in response to a proposal by
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) that would regulate cannabis
much like alcohol.”
As you'd expect, “Pro-pot groups ballyhooed the report as another sign that the long
debate over marijuana legalization has entered a new, more serious
phase,” writes Bailey, while Ammiano's measure has drawn staunch opposition from law enforcement.
Maybe we can, as ex-Prez Dubnuts put it, smoke 'em out. The longer the financial meltdown lasts, the more cuts that will have to be made to law enforcement budgets, so there will be fewer opponents around to readily dismiss a novel idea.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.