Legalize It ??? Pot As Cure for California Fiscal Disaster ???
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Perhaps only in California could a group of marijuana smokers call themselves fiscal realists.
And yet, faced with a $20 billion deficit, strained state services and regular legislative paralysis, voters in California are now set to consider a single-word solution to help ease some of the state’s money troubles: legalize.
Perhaps only in California could a group of marijuana smokers call themselves fiscal realists.
And yet, faced with a $20 billion deficit, strained state services and regular legislative paralysis, voters in California are now set to consider a single-word solution to help ease some of the state’s money troubles: legalize.
Perhaps only in California could a group of marijuana smokers call themselves fiscal realists.
And yet, faced with a $20 billion deficit, strained state services and regular legislative paralysis, voters in California are now set to consider a single-word solution to help ease some of the state’s money troubles: legalize.
On Wednesday, the California secretary of state certified a November vote on a ballot measure that would legalize, tax and regulate marijuana, a plan that advocates say could raise $1.4 billion and save precious law enforcement and prison resources.[br]
Indeed, unlike previous efforts at legalization — including a failed 1972 measure in California — the 2010 campaign will not dwell on assertions of marijuana’s harmlessness or its social acceptance, but rather on cold cash.
“We need the tax money,” said Richard Lee, founder of Oaksterdam University, a trade school for marijuana growers, in Oakland, who backed the ballot measure’s successful petition drive. “Second, we need the tax savings on police and law enforcement, and have that law enforcement directed towards real crime.”
Supporters are hoping to raise $10 million to $20 million for the campaign, primarily on the Internet, with national groups planning to urge marijuana fans to contribute $4.20 at a time, a nod to 420, a popular shorthand for the drug.
The law would permit licensed retailers to sell up to one ounce at a time.
Those sales would be a new source of sales tax revenue for the state …
Supporters of the bill say the proposal’s language would allow cities or local governments to opt out, likely creating “dry counties” in some parts of the state.
The proposed law would allow only those over 21 to buy, and would ban smoking marijuana in public or around minors …
Local opt-out provisions are part of a strategy to allay people’s fears about adding another legal vice and to help capture a group considered key to passing the bill: non-pot-smoking swing voters.
“There’s going to be a large sector of the electorate that would never do this themselves that’s going to sort out what the harm would be versus what the supposed good would be,”
said Frank Schubert, a longtime California political strategist who opposes the bill. “That’s where the election is going to be won.”
But Dan Newman, a San Francisco-based strategist for the ballot measure, said he expected broad, bipartisan support for the bill, especially among those Californians worried about the recession.
“Voters’ No. 1 concern right now is the budget and the economy,” Mr. Newman said, “which makes them look particularly favorably at something that will bring in more than $1 billion a year.” …
[A]dvertisements [for the measure] will feature a former deputy sheriff saying the war on marijuana has failed.“It’s time to control it,” he concludes, “and tax it.”
From the New York Times, March 26, 2010
