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Logic: Warping Pot Tax in Denver » WY Liberty Blog |
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Logic: Warping Pot Tax in Denver » WY Liberty Blog |
Logic: Warping Pot Tax in Denver
By Sven Larson, Ph.D.
If man ever built a machine that could defy the laws of nature, that machine would be the government. Our politicians and tax-paid bureaucrats are not that far into the skies yet, but they have certainly learned how to defy the laws of logic. The latest evidence comes from Denver, where the city is taxing medical marijuana at 7.72 percent to pay for public preschools and mass transit. Now a councilman wants to add an additional six percent to fund youth drug prevention programs:
Denver City Councilman Doug Linkhart has proposed a ballot measure that would place an additional 6 percent sales tax on medical marijuana sold in the city to pay for youth programming. … The new tax would raise an estimated $4.24 million annually, based on current sales-tax revenues generated by medical-marijuana sales in the city. … “The connection between medical marijuana and youth programs is that these are kids that are most vulnerable to using drugs and getting into other problems,” Linkhart said. “I want to protect them from those issues.” … Another $1 million would be generated annually for crime prevention, including a new juvenile assessment center for minor offenders and youth with mental health, substance abuse and family or school-related problems.
Regardless of what one thinks about the illegal status of marijuana, taxing marijuana to pay for marijuana prevention is even more absurd than when President Clinton proposed a tobacco tax to pay for SCHIP, health insurance for children. With this new tax, the ability of the city of Denver to keep kids off drugs will depend on the residents of Denver using massive amounts of medical marijuana each year.
Perhaps the city council in Denver should continue down this creative revenue path. Why not legalize bank robberies for the financially needy and charge a heist tax on the loot? The heist tax could then be used to send entitlement checks to the financially needy to prevent them from robbing banks. Or better yet: why not use the heist tax for prison rehabilitation programs? This would provide additional jobs for police, tax authorities, judges, rehabilitation specialists, and robbers who choose the rehabilitation lifestyle. This would create many new jobs for city bureaucrats to continually refine the robbery tax statutes and the rehabilitation programs.
Another absurd side of the medical marijuana tax is this claim by its proponents, such as Rob Corry, quoted as an attorney for several medical marijuana dispensaries:
Through taxation comes legitimacy, and this would further legitimize our industry.
In Denver medical marijuana is dispensed under prescription-style regulations, but the city’s sales tax does not apply to regular prescription drugs. Does that mean that the prescription drug industry is not a legitimate business?
Instead of creating yet more absurd taxes, perhaps the city of Denver should consider something far more common-sensical, like rolling back its spending?
Tags: Denver, medicinal marijuana, pot tax
This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 11:35 am by Sven Larson, Ph.D and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.