Chronic City: To Tax Pot, Or Not? Oakland Votes Tuesday
Mon., Jul. 20 2009 @ 3:59PM
 |
| Photo: chron.ron |
| The color of money |
Dispensaries have already been paying a rate of $1.20 per $1,000 of gross receipts. Measure F would create a separate category for marijuana sellers, at a rate of $18 per $1,000 of sales. Sales taxes is already assessed on purchases.
Many activists see the proposed ordinance as an incremental step toward complete legalization. After all, once government bean counters associate the marijuana business with a positive revenue stream, they're likely going to think in much more favorable terms about the herb -- and be a lot less inclined to crack down on dispensaries.
The ordinance would create a new business tax category in Oakland
for legal marijuana merchants (of which Oakland currently has only
four), and would likely bring the cash-strapped city hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year in additional revenue. Oakland City Auditor
Courtney Ruby estimates initial revenues from the proposed ordinance at
$294,000 annually.
Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan
said she believes the actual take could be closer to $1 million. The
city's four dispensaries report that they took in $19.7 million in the
last fiscal year.
"I don't think it's a turning point... but it starts the ball rolling," Oakland City Attorney John Russo told the San Francisco Chronicle.
"As cities start taxing pot and making money, other government entities
are going to start asking: 'Why aren't we getting in on this revenue
stream?'"
Local marijuana dispensaries (along
with community groups and even local police) almost unanimously support
the new tax, seeing it as a way to further legitimize their businesses.
And it's not hard to understand their desire to be seen as legitimate,
in a city that not so long ago was on the front lines of the war
between federal and state marijuana laws. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme
Court upheld the DEA's shutdown of an Oakland dispensary, finding no
"medical necessity" exemptions in federal pot laws.
The
issue of marijuana as an law enforcement concern for the Oakland Police
Department was clarified by 2004's Measure Z, which instructed city
cops to make marijuana laws their lowest priority.
Los Angeles Looking North
It's
unlikely that anyone is watching the outcome of Tuesday's vote more
closely than members of the Los Angeles City Council. Last week,
Councilwoman Janice Hahn called for L.A. to get its share of money from
the city's pot dispensaries.
Hahn suggested
during last week's city council meeting that a city tax on medical
marijuana could provide millions of dollars for Los Angeles, which, like
Oakland, is in dire straits financially. Between 400 and 800 pot shops
(according to whose estimate you believe) operate in Los Angeles; none
are currently taxed. Hahn argues that marijuana should be taxed just
like any other commodity.
Pundits believe a pot tax would be a slam-dunk politically, according to the L.A. Weekly.
"Although Californians, particularly Angelenos, have repeatedly shown
their tolerance for individual marijuana use, I would bet most of us
would view such a tariff as just another sin tax -- the kind voters
almost routinely pass on cigarettes and liquor," writes Steven Mikulan.
Sacramento's Watching, Too...
You
can believe that if Oakland -- and Los Angeles -- start raking in piles
of cash from marijuana dispensaries, state legislators will be taking
notes.
As reported in this space,
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) earlier this year proposed a
measure that would legalize and regulate marijuana sales to adults in
California.
Particularly in view of the
state's economic woes, the proposal has attracted serious interest,
especially since last week's report that indicates a marijuana tax
could fatten state coffers by as much as $1.4 billion a year.
Opposing View: Unfairly Taxing Patients?
Occasionally
lost in the excitement of the rapidly-changing situation on the ground
is the fact that the proposed city taxes on marijuana might be seen as
unfairly penalizing the sick and dying, since they'll be assessed
solely on medical users of the herb.
"Ammiano's
[state-wide] bill specifically exempts medical patients from the tax,"
medical marijuana patient/activist J. Craig Canada told the SF Weekly.
"Oakland and Los Angeles, on the other hand, are proposing taking money
the sick and dying spend for medicine and giving it to politicians, to
balance the budget."
Canada, of Santa Cruz,
says he's been a medical marijuana patient since 1995, when he became a
member of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club a year before
Proposition 215 legalized medical marijuana statewide. In 2004, he
became the first person in San Bernardino County to have felony
cultivation of marijuana charges dismissed on medical grounds.
"It's
a regressive tax," Canada said. "The people who use the most marijuana
and need the highest potency are the sickest, and probably the poorest.
Medicine should not be taxed."
8 comment(s) / Post a Comment
foam order.com