TAXING QUANDARY:

LEGALIZE MARIJUANA TO INCREASE STATE REVENUE AND
SCALE BACK VIOLENCE, OR MAINTAIN AMERICA'S DIFFICULT WAR ON DRUGS?

I'd just entered the heart of California pot country, but just in case
I'd somehow missed that fact, a fresh, knife-etched message near the
trailhead of a Del Norte County forest path helpfully reminded me:
"Yeah Weed!"

We were on the homeward leg our biennial family trip to southern
Oregon, and we'd stopped for a short hike in the redwoods. Spotting
the jagged graffiti, I paused and sniffed the air for the telltale
pungency of unrealized tax revenue.

Public expressions of enthusiasm for the joys of recreational
marijuana are hardly rare. What's new is that tie-wearing,
vote-trolling public officials have, in increasing number, taken up
the "Yeah Weed!" chorus themselves -- with a little more dignified
phrasing, of course.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, apparently willing to consider a course of
action that seemed politically untenable only a few years ago,
broached the subject back in May while discussing California's ongoing
budget disaster.

"I think it's time for a debate" about taxing pot, he said. "I think
we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that
have legalized marijuana and other drugs."

Advocates says the state could see $1.3 billion in annual tax revenues
from marijuana -- in addition to the other potential savings that
legalization could bring.

The study Schwarzenegger suggests might also look at California
municipalities where the door is suddenly ajar. Oakland residents
overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure July 21 that would make that
city the first in the U.S. to set a new, much higher tax rate for
medical-marijuana businesses -- $18 on every $1,000 in sales. Sometime
soon the Los Angeles and Sacramento city councils are also likely to
consider taxing (and implicitly accepting) pot dispensaries.

But what about a broader easing of restrictions? Why not simply
legalize pot? Why not endorse regulated commercial distribution of a
drug that advocates argue is less dangerous than cigarettes and
alcohol; has legitimate herbal and medicinal uses; and, in today's
world, tends to distract law enforcement from more pressing issues?
Fifty-six percent of Californians responding to a Field Poll this past
spring supported such a step -- if it could help offset the budget
deficit. Support for legalization across the U.S. has roughly doubled
over the past decade to more than 45 percent.

But what, I wondered as I strolled though that thick grove of
redwoods, would the citizens of pot country think about a state where
one could presumably pick up a pack of Philip Morris-produced Doobies
down at the corner liquor store?

Humboldt County is famous for the availability of its potent,
homegrown marijuana. So is Mendocino County, which sees $1 billion in
annual benefits to the local economy from marijuana, according to an
MSNBC report last February. Those counties were on my way home anyway,
so I stopped to ask.

One guy I encountered seemed outraged that I would promulgate the
stereotype of Humboldt County as a center of smoke-shrouded
entrepreneurial spirit, but everyone else readily admitted its
validity. In fact, some were miffed that Mendocino seemed to have
stolen Humboldt's rightful mantle as California's ganja capital.

"Mendocino? I would have said Humboldt," said Tammy Corley, working
the front counter at the ACE hardware store a block from Arcata's
charming if somewhat tie-dyed town square. "But, yeah, I can totally
believe that marijuana is a huge part of the local economy in this
part of the state. People everywhere know it, too.

"I went to San Francisco with my kids a while ago and they met some
other kids who were about their same age. And when they found out my
kids were from Humboldt, the response was, "Wow, hey, did you guys
bring any 'green'?"

Another block over, record-store owner Matt Jackson worried that
corporate farming operations would rush in the moment the Legislature
gave its OK to set up shop.

"And that would bring down all the mom-and-pop (marijuana) businesses
around here," said Jackson, owner of Missing Link Records and a
graduate of nearby Humboldt State University.

He spoke admiringly of a Vietnam vet he knows who put his three kids
through college by growing and selling marijuana.

"It would destroy the culture of Humboldt County and Mendocino County
if it were decriminalized, because it would bring 'investors,'"
Jackson said.

Down the road in Laytonville, just over the border in Mendocino
County, clean-cut Keith Campbell stopped ringing up customers at
Gravier's Chevron long enough to admit that legalization would indeed
have an impact, perhaps even on mainstream businesses like his.

"It would hurt the economy here because the price would drop," he
said. "Once it's legal, the growers out in the back woods can't get
those (high) prices anymore. And everybody down here in town feels
it."

But Sam Burnett, a server at Buster's Burgers & Brew in Willits, sees
some advantages to legalization beyond the tax revenue benefits: It
might help bring an end to the violence that sometimes finds its way
this far north.

"As long as it's illegal, you'll have the wrong kind of people coming
in -- Mexican cartels, whatever," he said. "We've had guys from the
Bay Area come up here looking for it. They bring guns and wander
around (in remote areas), looking for drugs to steal. ... In the past
we've seen an influx of people who come in here knowing it's possible
to take advantage of the situation."

To a great extent, legalizing pot statewide would kill their
motivation, much as it would end at least some of the violence in
urban areas.

Yvonne Seibel, working the counter at the Book Juggler a block south
on Willits' Main Street, admitted she was torn by the idea of
legalized pot. The "Marlboro-ization" of marijuana might introduce
harmful chemicals to the cultivation or packaging processes, but if
legalization creates a better and more widespread awareness of the
health benefits of herbs and nontraditional crops, that's a good
thing, she said.

And, as if to prove that even trained herbalists like herself can
appreciate a functioning government, she noted this: "If it helps fix
our roads, I'm for it."

Legalizing marijuana would have an impact on every town in California,
and not just because it might help straighten out the state budget or
bring some calm to the streets. It would alter the way we live, too --
imperceptibly in many corners of the state, perhaps, but quite
dramatically in others.