REGARDING PROP. 19 July 27, 2010
Dear Richard Lee and friends,
With regard to Proposition 19, I wish I felt free to help you, but I despise the idea of justifying the “legalization” of marijuana — or of anything else — on the basis of the revenue it would generate for government. There was no Constitutional justification for outlawing marijuana in the first place, and its cultivation, sale, and possession are all Ninth Amendment rights.
I understand your motivation in conducting this campaign. Understand me, that taxation is slavery. Taxation is the fuel of war. Offering the State something else to steal and use against us is not progress.
L. Neil Smith
- Posted in : Politics
- Author :Administrator
Comments»
Espousing the potential for taxation if the state would only allow a plant to be deemed legal. It strikes at the heart of politicians and statists who wish to continue feeding at our necks, which are really the only people that need persuading… right?
Isn’t the establishment already profiting enough by placing non-violent statute offenders into small concrete boxes? They should not be given the serving utensil to a pie they wish to destroy.
Should cannabis be legal? Yeah.
if it is legalized will it be taxed? of course it will be.
Should marijuana be legalized so it can be taxed? No, it should be legalized because the law against it is wrong and a bad law.
Should all bad laws be repealed? y’think?
Will the government find ways to tax every product thus legalized?
You need to ask?
Marijuana must NOT be legalized. It must be de-criminalized. Semantics ARE important. IF legalized, the future argument will be “It was a mistake to ever legalize it!” It de-criminalized, they then have to try to justify the criminalization of a weed.
Neale:
Judging by the way the “brown menace” was used the first time to criminalize a plant and the knee-jerk reactionary response that we see with the passing of SB1070 in Arizona, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same rhetoric used to make pot illegal again.
The same voters that conservatives just love in AZ, are the same jerk-offs who elected Janet Napolitano for 21st governor of their state. That tells me that not only is no true justification needed in politics, but that the voters who allow this crud to occur could care less about the rights, rationale and logic of others who do not align with their emotional perspective on reality.
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“The power to tax is the power to destroy.”
It was under the premise that the federal government has the authority to tax the sale of cannabis products (which includes not only tetrahydrocannabinol [THC], the psychoactive component of the hemp plant, but also the fiber, pulp, seeds and other goods derived from ditchweed) that the Congress originated the laws criminalizing the growth, transfer, and use of hemp in the early 20th Century.
At present, the very high profit margins enjoyed by the purveyors of marijuana as a psychoactive substance is the result of criminalization as a “government price support program.”
Any taxation levied on the growth, harvesting, and sale of hemp’s THC-containing residuum would have the effect of continuing (at an admittedly lower level) a price support program for the criminal conveyance of these products.
The evasion of such taxes, in fact, sustains the not inconsiderable criminal market in “moonshine” alcoholic beverages, does it not?
What’s more, such taxation on THC would necessarily restrict the much broader commercial market for hemp-derived fiber, seed derivatives (oil, cattle feed, chemical feedstocks), and pulp, which has the potential to greatly enrich not only farmers but consumers throughout America.
Any tax on marijuana would necessarily have a multitude of adverse impacts, none of which are justified by any fiddlin’ revenue to be gained by civil government.
By all means, decriminalize the growth of all Cannabis species, and to hell with the concept of “legalization.”
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Sorry about semantic slip.
If the laws banning cannabis are repealed and declared to have always been unjust, unconstitutional and null and void it will be a good thing. They should be repealed because they are unjust, unconstitutional and so on. Whether or not this will increase tax revenues is not an argument for or against repeal.
that said, will the feds and states impose revenue taxes (too low to reduce sales, but put some money in government coffers), sin taxes (excise taxes high enough to negatively affect sales), protective tariffs (tax on imported marijuana to sufficiently raise the price that it can not compete with homegrown), and other taxes I can’t think of if the laws are repealed?
You mean I need to ask?
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Albert, it is simpler, cleaner, more effective, and more sensible overall for those who govern to propose the complete decriminalization of ditchweed (Cannabis sativa and its congener species) and let the market take the growth, processing, and consumption of derived products wherever it can go.
I predict that the psychoactive components of the Cannabis species will achieve no substantially greater physical market than they have already, and that the dollar-denominated transactions required to satisfy consumer demand will fall precipitously.
Almost certainly, this segment of the cannabis market will never recover to its pre-decriminalization level.
There are, after all, only so many bakehead schmucks in any population. Market saturation will set in like lightning, and the situation will be immensely disappointing for those who might have thought to make their fortune selling Acapulco Red to an expanding customer base of stoners.
On the other hand, the agricultural industry will go nuts. Do you have any idea how great an advantage there is in cannabis as a source of pulp when compared against wood crops like loblolly pine?
Setting aside the markets for cannabis seed and fiber - which we might consider a kind of bonus - the hurds (or pith) produced on an acre of otherwise waste ground planted in these species give FOUR TIMES the amount of much more easily processed paper-making pulp than could be gotten with the same land devoted to the cultivation of even the fastest-growing trees.
And ditchweed - being, after all, a WEED - does not require the kinds of fertilization, pesticides, fungicides, and other costly works of husbandry that pulpwood trees need.
Forget the drug characteristics of cannabis. The market potential for this superb source of natural fiber, bulk cellulose, hemp seed pith and oil would (and does) set the average Ag School graduate into paroxysms of salivation. There are billions of dollars to be made here, and not much more than the proverbial mouse-fart of it is in recreational boojum.
I look upon cannabis decriminalization with an almost physical lust, and none of this is borne of any personal appetite for Alice B. Toklas’ brownie recipe.
The wealth to be attained by setting American farmers loose with ditchweed seed has not even been properly estimated. Whole industries wait to be born, and all that stands in the way are the ranks of the drug warriors.
What are we waiting for? Let them stand aside or die in their sockets.
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Richard,
I agree completely with you assessment. That said, willy nilly Big G will tax marijuana if it is ever decriminalized. They won’t even wait that long. At one time the state of Texas was even taxing ganja even though it was illegal.
To paraphrase John Milius’ take on my favorite tyrant, “Why spoil the beauty of the thing with legality?”
I don’t think it’s right that the government will impose a tax on marijuana and hashish, I’m just saying they will impose taxes as surely as a magnet attracts iron.
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I do not doubt that those who govern will tax absolutely everything they can. The creatures who slime into such positions of “public service” conceive themselves to be ready-spurred and booted to ride the productive population of each polity as a matter of some perverse natural or deity-denominated right.
Nothing else explains their astonishing arrogance, a characteristic which spurs the honest man to an almost insurmountable impulse to take a baseball bat to their faces and keep pounding until nothing is left but a bloody pulp.
Good heavens, but of COURSE they want the law-abiding private citizen disarmed and helpless. Even at a level below that of consciousness, they realize how much their victims desire them to be dead and gone.
Even granting these worthless parasites their extortionate “cut” of the pie, however, and allowing them to tax the productive activities of their betters, it would be sensible in the extreme for the political class to get their fucking hands off the cannabis industry and let it grow.
As economist Art Laffer was able to demonstrate back in Reagan’s time, the bloodsucking tax collector prospers even more when he limits his depredations to levels that do not suppress economic activity.
So what is the priority of the pathologically governmental? Do they wish to gain wealth - either for themselves or for the invidious projects they lust to command - or do they wish merely to keep their strangulation hold upon the lives of the honest people upon whom they batten?
Oh, for a little honest greed on the part of these sons of bitches. THAT we could cope with.
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“And ditchweed - being, after all, a WEED - does not require the kinds of fertilization, pesticides, fungicides, and other costly works of husbandry that pulpwood trees need.”
Don’t forget it’s properties AS a natural pesticide-plant it with potatoes and stop th potato bugs. Plant it with tomatoes, stop nearly ALL pests. I don’t remember te other plants that it works to protect, but my father used it a LOT in the 70s for this after he found it growing in the back field and noticed how much healthier the tomatoes were with the CS than the ones grown with pesticides (It didn’t hurt that he had a LOT of artist friends, win wink nudge nudge)
A smart sane parasite only takes a little bit, never enough to make the host sick or even cause its death. A really smart parasite might even offer a benefit, for example intestinal flora that produce vitamins the host absorbs.
However, too many members of our want to be ruling class are “Stupid, evil, and crazy.”
And yeah, i did just insult bacteria by comparing them to congress and the federal bureaucracy.
As Director of the Anti-Defamation League Of Anaerobic Bacteria, I demand that you retract your insult and apologize at once. Do you know how far we microorganisms would have to devolve to reach the level of bureaucrats and politicians? Humph! You will be hearing from my staph!
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*Escherichia coli* isn’t an anaerobic species.
Isn’t that typical? An outsider is functioning as director of a pressure group for a populace to which he doesn’t belong.
The heartening thing to note is that “bureaucrats and politicians” are most definitely aerobic creatures.
Meaning that they can be strangled, suffocated, drowned, choked, and done to death by way of tension pneumothorax, all of which deprive the central nervous system of oxygenation.
I would say that maintaining an appreciation of mortality among these creatures is both potentially corrective of their behavior and a consolation to the rest of us.
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I apologize to ADLOAB. Politician and bureaucrats are insulted when compared to each other, poor innocent microbes don’t deserve to be slanged about so badly.