Comment by Jon Heim on October 17, 2010 at 5:28pm

I'm just curious how they are going to tax such an easily grown plant that could be worth so much.

Comment by Misty: Baytheist Living! on October 17, 2010 at 8:55pm

In Oaksterdam, they tax it like a medicine. The co-ops pay some sort of tax that pharmacies do, I think. They regulate their own sells, and I'm pretty sure that they can't actually buy it or can't actually sell it or something, all they can do is provide a smoke friendly environment and take/give "donations."
Like I said, I never got my prescription for it, I do it illegally.
Why?
Because 1) I find it fucking offensive that if I pay a local doctor $50 to write me the prescription for something even as stupid as menstrual cramps, my already non-existent, super-expensive and pretty much ineffective health insurance will snap that up as proof of some pre-existing condition and use it to wiggle out of paying when I actually DO need them, and 2) I just plain don't follow laws that I'm ethically against. You want a culture of sheep that will murder on command? Start by taking away their confidence in an inner ability to tell right from wrong. We see it with religions claiming that the only morality is a god assigned one, when all other concepts of justice are just opinions. Undermining a person's confidence in themselves is the first step in gaining control over them. It is also the most basic premise for control of a society. Tell them that they are not capable of seeing the whole picture, knowing the whole truth, foreseeing the whole plan, ect....This is what the military uses in boot camp when they "break a person down to build them back up stronger" and literally say " you obey orders because you rely on the fact that your superiors are looking at the bigger picture and have intel that you don't."

I do not have to put my trust in some higher power. I do not have to let anyone decide my morals for me. I do not need the government/god to protect me from society/temptation. I'm pretty good at knowing right from wrong. I mean sure, let's get the big ones on the books about stopping at stop signs and not killing each other for fun, but do you really need to save me from what I willingly put into my own body? Humans are altruistic by nature because we are pack animals. I don't need goat herders from 2,000 ago telling me how to live my life anymore than I need from some ivy-league educated senator sitting on Capitol Hill telling me how to live my life. With a basic infrastructure of how people need to act in a city to keep from wanting to kill each other and where our taxes go, the right to swing your fist ends where another man's nose begins. But that works the other way, too. No nose=no laws.

You can't really tax a plant that's being grown in small enough amounts to be for personal use. I mean fuck. Can the government come in and call me a mint farmer because I have a pot of spearmint on my balcony? I do drink it in iced tea. I do dry it for lamb dressing.
No. But what they can do and what they will do is treat it as a drug or produce or give it its own category. Wherever it is sold, in whatever form it is sold in will have a hook to be taxed. But the home farmer has nothing to worry about. Still, that's a ton of tax revenue, and nothing to laugh at. I mean, how many pot heads do you know will devotedly tend their little greenies and provide them with all the attention they need when instead someone can just nip down to the market for a weed run?
With the prescription in Ca comes the right to also grow a certain number of plants. But how many people actually do it? Quite a few, admittedly, but those are gardeners who happen to use pot, not pot users who would rather grow their own than pick it up at the co-op on the way home from work. No matter how it's legislated, the government will still get their fair share of it, I'm sure. Hell, slap a leisure tax on it when you legalize it for recreational use? Two different market prices for the same product? Oh yeah! The potential is HUGE!

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