Chronic City: Marijuana, Money, and the Media
 |
| Compassion Family Ministries |
| Yes, Grasshopper... Money grows on killa trees. |
From Fox's attempted debunking of the tax benefits of State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano's statewide regulation and taxation bill, to a huge bust in Fresno County, to Oakland's first-in-the-nation Marijuana tax (reported in this space), just about every Marijuana story (pro- and anti-) reported this week had big dollar signs all over it.
• Fox News attempts hatchet job on pot revenue story: Fox News today published a story by Joseph Abrams which attempts to pooh-pooh last week's report from the state tax board which indicated that the legalization and taxation of pot would add $1.4 billion per year to state coffers.
In typical Foxed-up fashion, the story indulges in good old faux-journalistic traditions like guilt by association, saying the Board of Equalization's estimate "appears to be based on hazy 'studies' conducted by Marijuana advocates."
Well, then, that's different! If "those people" had anything to do
with the study, it must automatically be invalid. I mean, if you want
to know about Marijuana, why on earth would you want to go to a bunch
of god-damned scuzzy pot smokers, anyway? Hey, wait a minute...
In
any event, Fox's "debunking" of the $1.4 billion number basically
consists of (correctly) pointing out that the number is the product of
a lot of estimation and sheer guesswork, and (dubiously) suggesting
that the number should be only half that, $700 million. We are given to
believe that Fox News must know a lot more about Marijuana precisely
because they don't smoke it, or apparently even know many people who do.
The
original $1.4 billion estimate hinges on Californians smoking 16
million ounces a year, but Fox seems to have divined that the state's
stoners only dust 8 million ounces worth of bowls a year, based on...
yeah, that's right: Their own Foxy guesstimates.
One
might question the accuracy of Fox's "corrected" number, since it
depends on an estimate of just over an ounce or month smoked by each
"daily Marijuana user," as opposed to the two-ounce-per-month estimate
used in the state study.
I don't know who Fox parties with, but the folks I know smoke more than an ounce a month.
• Fresno County's billion-dollar bust: "$1 billion in Marijuana seized in California," the headline blared this morning. But was it, really?
"Operation
Save Our Sierra" (nice job on the dramatic name) began July 13,
involving local, state and federal agencies working together to stop
Marijuana growing in Fresno County. New U.S. Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske
pronounced Fresno a "high intensity drug trafficking area" and talked
about "local authorities' work to reclaim the land."
Unfortunately, Kerlikowske kept talking after he should have stopped. "Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit," he added idiotically, in a sad attempt to win back the drug warriors that were horrified by the Obama administration's promise to stop medical Marijuana raids in states where medicinal pot is legal.
According
to the story, the 82 suspects arrested so far "have links to Mexican
drug cartels" (what, exactly, does that mean? Hispanic surnames?),
though they didn't release further details.
In
the operation, the largest in Fresno County history, at least 330,000
plants have been seized in the mountainous and sparsely populated
eastern part of the county. Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims is
throwing around the figure of $4,000 per plant (way to catch the
interest of thousands more potential pot farmers, Margaret!)
• Oakland passes first municipal pot tax in the nation: Measure F,
which makes Oakland the first city in the nation to impose a special
tax on sales of medical Marijuana, passed overwhelmingly with more than
80 percent of the vote on Tuesday.
Dispensaries,
which had already been paying a tax rate of $1.20 per $1,000 of gross
receipts, will now be taxed at a rate of $18 per $1,000 of sales.
Oakland
officials estimate initial revenues from the new tax, which kicks in
next year, will net the city around $300,000 per year.
.......
It's an inescapable message, even for prohibitionists: Marijuana equals money.
The
only choice (given the futility of the seven-decade war on pot) seems
to be where we want that money to go. Is it going to go to "drug
cartels," or will it go to legitimate businesses and state government?
Stay tuned.
Email to Friend
Write to Editor
Print Article
