SHOULDN'T STATE AT LEAST COUNT THE POT CO-OPS?

Our View: Tax Authorities Are Missing A Chance To Gather Real Facts To
Illuminate An Emotional Debate.

For good or ill, one of the most dramatic changes in California's
cities in the past year is the spread of storefront dispensaries
selling medical marijuana, a trend that's made parts of conservative
Redding feel like Amsterdam.

The commercial explosion has divided neighbors. It's fueled a
seemingly endless round of debates over zoning and moratoria. It's fed
both law enforcement backlashes and legalizers' determination to
further relax pot laws.

What it hasn't done is prompt the tax authorities at the state Board
of Equalization to precisely count the number of co-ops and
collectives -- and to tally their sales beyond rough estimates.

That's especially odd given that the board did its part to help the
dispensaries go straight by requiring that they obtain seller's
permits and pay sales taxes. That move didn't change the criminal
laws, but it carries moral weight when a still-suspect business can
argue that it pays taxes like any other.

And the board further threw an armload of kindling on the
pro-legalization fire last year when it issued a report estimating
that legalizing and taxing marijuana could bring as much $1.4 billion
in new revenue each year to our deficit-crippled state government.

That figure was based on a lot of assumptions about how marijuana
sales, and the numbers for illegal markets are notoriously difficult
to nail down.

Yet the Board of Equalization has the means to track, with a tax
collector's rigor, precisely how much money Californians spend on
medical marijuana. The agency already reports sales in a variety of
categories -- from new cars to cameras.

A Board of Equalization spokeswoman said there's no category for
marijuana dispensaries, so the shops can be counted, for instance, as
pharmacies or health food stores.

Surely, though, a medical marijuana shop is a unique use that deserves
separate tracking. When was the last time a health food store caused a
revolt by neighboring businesses like that at Redding's Mission Square?

All the Board of Equalization would need to do is add a new box to
check on tax forms and insert one more line to its spreadsheets.
Surely the board can manage that small task.

It's worth the effort. The raucous debates about medical marijuana are
thick with emotion and myth, but there are few hard facts about the
scope of nominally legal sales.

Tax officials are interested in the money. For the rest of us, the
chance to better understand California's emerging market for medical
marijuana is no less attractive.