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    caekislove-caekingitupHamilton Nolan
    8/01/16 1:06pm

    So, is home growing gonna be made illegal or what? Why would anyone pay taxes on a weed that grows anywhere?

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      Quint the Greyercaekislove-caekingitup
      8/01/16 1:08pm

      I grow tomatoes at home. Brew my own beer at home. Yet I still buy them.

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      caekislove-caekingitupQuint the Greyer
      8/01/16 1:12pm

      Where do you live where tomatoes have a special tax on them?

      Also, homebrewing used to be illegal. Home distilling without a license is still illegal.

      That’s why I was asking.

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    MizJenkinsHamilton Nolan
    8/01/16 1:05pm

    Does that factor in the amount you would raise in income taxes if you allowed the people currently in jail for petty weed crimes to live productive lives?

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      Dick BestMizJenkins
      8/01/16 1:08pm

      plus 50k per year not spent on jail space.

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      Hamilton NolanMizJenkins
      8/01/16 1:08pm

      I’m sure the cascading effects of winding down our insane prison industrial complex/ War on Drugs would be much, much larger.

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    helgaperezHamilton Nolan
    8/01/16 1:09pm

    I am distressed that hospitalizations of young children who have ingested marijuana products has drastically increased in states where marijuana has been legalized. I am pro-legalization, but we need to do more to fix this.

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      Quasar Funkhelgaperez
      8/01/16 1:14pm

      You read this and get disressed:

      About twice as many kids visited the Children’s Hospital Colorado emergency room per year in 2014 and 2015 as did in years prior to the opening of recreational marijuana stores, according to the study. Annual poison-control cases increased five-fold, the study found.

      Keep reading and do not get distressed:

      Sixteen kids age 9 and younger went to the Children’s ER for marijuana in 2015, and, even with the post-legalization jump, marijuana exposure cases account for about six out of every 1,000 emergency room visits for ingestions, according to the study.

      Basically, they’re using scare statistics. Yes, ER visits “doubled.” From 8 to 16 in the entire state for an entire year.

      http://www.denverpost.com/2016/07/25/col…

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      helgaperezQuasar Funk
      8/01/16 1:19pm

      I am now relieved for the sake of kids in Colorado, but I am still distressed that anti-legalization interests will try to use this information to block legalization. I am slightly comforted that legalization seems to have swiftly-growing support.

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    kamla deviHamilton Nolan
    8/01/16 1:04pm

    This is pretty much the only way the state of Illinois can hope to survive - and thrive economically after decades of mismanagement.

    Too bad for them that they elected a “businessman*” to run the state like a “business” further into the fucking ground.

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      DerpHapleykamla devi
      8/01/16 1:07pm

      As an Illinoisian(?), I would welcome this because I like weed.

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      The Shape of Punk to Comekamla devi
      8/01/16 1:08pm

      hope to survive

      Little known fact, there is a new AIDS epidemic ravaging rural rust-belt states right now. Mainly Indiana, Penn, Ohio and KY. But I think its creeping into Illinois as well. Pence recently approved a bill in Indiana to create a needle-exchange program to combat a surge in AIDS among opioid users. So… Yeah. More or less what you’re saying. In some places, this is really about survival.

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    Quint the GreyerHamilton Nolan
    8/01/16 1:04pm

    Legal Weed Could Raise $12 Billion a Year in Taxes

    Not to mention what it’d do to pizza sales.

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      AbracadoibraQuint the Greyer
      8/01/16 1:09pm

      Seriously, if weed were legalized nation-wide, any smart investor would invest in Yum Brands (owners of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, etc...), Pepsi-Co (Frito Lay owners) and similar companies. I’m surprised those big corporations aren’t funding legalization efforts.

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      Quint the GreyerAbracadoibra
      8/01/16 1:14pm

      and seamless. I ain’t getting up and diving for that stuff.

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    HypnoCatHamilton Nolan
    8/01/16 1:07pm

    Tax revenue is well and good, but my hope is that it will also mean we stop locking people up just for having weed on them. I know it won’t much deter cartels since they’ll switch to something else, but it’s a step.

    However, smoking and driving is fucking unacceptable. Get out of my way, stoner.

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      kamla deviHypnoCat
      8/01/16 1:08pm

      It would save money to stop locking people up for non-violent drug crimes. Weed is the cash crop for the cartels - most people aren’t going to switch to habitual cocaine/meth/heroin use and maintain normal lives.

      It’s only unacceptable if you are in a hurry.

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      theunseenonekamla devi
      8/01/16 1:19pm

      Driving stoned is just as unsafe as driving drunk. Don’t do it.

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    Cyrils-cashmere-sweater-vestHamilton Nolan
    8/01/16 1:07pm

    Is 25 percent “reasonable”? What is it in Colorado because I recently read there is a black market there and people are being arrested (mostly POC, mostly Denver).

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      theunseenoneCyrils-cashmere-sweater-vest
      8/01/16 1:27pm

      I don’t find it reasonable. “Luxury” taxes are stupid in my opinion. Just tax the marijuana (and cigarettes and alcohol) at the normal sales tax for everything else you greedy shits.

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      ninjaginCyrils-cashmere-sweater-vest
      8/01/16 1:39pm

      There still is a black market, that’s true, but it’s mostly not for the consumer — rather, it’s a black market for producers. There are a ton of people who did not want to be caregiver-certified to grow, and/or have to deal with all the testing and inspections that are also required for the recreational market. So, what you get are illegal grow operations to produce more cheaply and sell under-the-table to dispensaries. Since everything’s done in cash (blame the banking laws), these transactions with unlicensed/uncertified growers are easy to keep off the books. Price pressure is pretty intense, and every recreational seller wants to be the cheapest, so this incents shops to buy cheap on the black market so they can make better margin at the cash register.

      There are dispensary networks that grow everything sold by their shops, though, and this is especially true for the medical cannabis dispensaries which produce specific strains and preparations (tinctures, creams, ointments, balms, edibles) for different types of patients with specific needs. These producers are highly supervised, and have been for awhile.

      There are arrests — for illegal grow operations. Illegal public use is a ticket and summons and most of these public use citations are tourists, or people who are new to the state and didn’t bother to learn all the laws. The illegal grow arrests are usually of people who came here to conduct a grow and then smuggle the product out to another state where the margins are higher. It’s easier to get away with large grow operations, here, especially if they shut down and move before the authorities find out about them... they’ve become like “popups”.

      I have not read anything that talks about the racial demographics of the arrested, though. When you see reporting of the busts on the evening news, there doesn’t seem to be any one minority group standing out — there are plenty of white hands in the handcuff shots, bascially.

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    BCDFGHamilton Nolan
    8/01/16 1:21pm

    It should be noted here just what terms the economists in question are using:

    Tax policies are effective at curbing use, where Australia could raise AU$1 billion (and the United States US$12 billion).

    Bolding is my own. Now, here is the crux of the problem: once you talk about taxation as a means to curb use, you still end up talking about law enforcement being involved. So you’d end up creating a dichotomy between “legal” weed and “illegal” weed, with something like tax stamps.

    I’m neither a libertarian nor a puritan, but FFS, the U.S. should learn from its failures with drugs. The feds should, for everyone’s sake, just create a well-regulated monopoly on large scale growhouses (with registration & licensure), levy a very simple tax (that goes back to the states), and ban local taxes above a certain percentage.

    Why? Because anything more complex than that becomes rife with gangsters, hustlers, and small-time players that get caught in the middle of them.

    If you do not believe that’s the case, let’s look at modern tobacco: legal, taxed, and the center of god knows how many smuggling schemes set up between states that won’t tax (Virginia, the Carolinas, etc.) and states that tax heavily (mainly, New York). It’s created an ungodly number of incidents just based off those few states.

    Think there won’t be gangsterism and corruption involved? Look at this:

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/nyp…

    Think there won’t be victims to this? Rewatch this:

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      Maxine Floeffler, Super DelegateBCDFG
      8/01/16 1:42pm

      I gave up smoking (tobacco, I don’t smoke pot) a little over three years ago. In NYC a legal pack of cigarettes is always well over $10. The smoking rates are down, not as much as expected, but even the City estimates that well over 50% of cigarettes are smuggled. Some estimates are more like 70%.

      Former smoker Bloomberg introduced the punitive taxes. The joke was that if he gave up drinking (his wine cellar is legendary) he would have introduced a new Prohibition and we’d be taking ferries out to the middle of New York Harbor. Say what you will about Chris Christie, I don’t thnk health fascism is at the top of his agenda.

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      BCDFGMaxine Floeffler, Super Delegate
      8/01/16 2:01pm

      I’m an ex-smoker. I don’t mind cigarettes being taxed as heavily as they are. But the reality is, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina can be reached by a $20 Chinatown Bus ride within hours. You can buy at their prices, sell at a discount vs. NYC price, and still make at least a 50% Return on Investment. So the effectiveness of the tax scheme only goes so far before you create a black market —and then you get all the problems that brings, most notably the way it ends up financing even more illicit drugs.

      The growth of this kind of arbitrage should have been elementary economics for Bloomberg —it’s the kind of thing people do on his terminals all the time with less illicit commodities, after all— but I think the real case is that the cigarette taxes became an irresistable source of “easy” money for Health and Hospitals Corporation and the like.

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    gilbertkittensHamilton Nolan
    8/01/16 1:33pm

    I wonder if there is an equal protection argument to be made here? I live in a state where I can go to jail for marijuana possession, but right over there across this imaginary line are Americans doing the same thing, freely, with no fear of prosecution.

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      ABD2021gilbertkittens
      8/01/16 3:00pm

      Doubtful. It’s still illegal (federally speaking) across the border, the state is just not helping the Feds enforce that particular law (which is their right). If the Feds so chose they could go in and shut down the whole operation at any time.

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      gilbertkittensABD2021
      8/01/16 3:15pm

      Right, so, unequal protection under the law.

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    Richard CardenasHamilton Nolan
    8/01/16 1:39pm

    With a 25% tax won’t people who already buy illegally continue to buy illegally?

    Surely the penalty for selling weed and not remitting sales tax would be less than what it is now for selling weed illegally? Therefore people who are already ok with breaking the law would continue to be ok with breaking the law?

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      RenegadeRoyRichard Cardenas
      8/01/16 2:46pm

      It would still be cheaper though. Street weed has insane mark-up, unknown quality, typically a selection of a “weak stuff, bro” and “straight fire, dude”, and the risk of... well... being illegal. If I had to pay 50ish dollars instead of 45ish for an eigth but have legality, quality, and selection... well I’d take that trade-off. Thankfully I live in California and don’t currently need to worry about hunting down a dealer anymore.

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      ABD2021Richard Cardenas
      8/01/16 2:52pm

      There are plenty of people who would pay more in order to stay aboveboard if the option were available.

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