Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-SF) has been known as a big idea guy for a while here in San Francisco. His record as a legislator on the Board of Supervisors is really without comparison. You probably have heard about AB 390, that would legalize, regulate, and tax the sale of marijuana. Many simply laughed at the idea, but when a recent Field poll (PDF) showed that 56% of the state favored the idea, well, a lot fewer people are laughing now.
Someone else who isn’t laughing? Well, that would be our very own Governator, who told reporters today that he thinks the idea should be open to discussion. From the Bee:
“Well, I think it’s not time for that, but I think it’s time for a debate,” Schwarzenegger said. “I think all of those ideas of creating extra revenues, I’m always for an open debate on it. And I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs, what effect did it have on those countries?”
This still isn’t very likely to get passed anytime soon, but if we can get it done in the next decade both at the state and federal levels, we will spend a whole let less on the “War on Drugs” and putting it to better use. Oh, and we get a new product to put a sin tax on.
to treat pot exactly like grapes and wine. Both are intoxicating. Alcohol probably causes more problems for law enforcement (domestic violence, erratic driving). When pot is illegal, people growing it skirt all kinds of other rather mundane laws, like following the electrical code, like respecting water rights, like not trading pest-laden plants, like using illegal pesticides.
That said, the concept can’t work unless there is a corresponding action at the federal level that guarantees that there will not be federal prosecutions for people following the state law and paying taxes. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a hash of semi-legal activity, the worst of both worlds, and people will point to it and say, “see, this can’t work.”
Perhaps it could be done in conjunction with a federal bill to specifically exempt California from federal marijuana laws for some sunsetting time period, as an experiment.