CALIFORNIA DREAMING OF POT TAX BONANZA

'Vansterdam" was front and centre during the Winter Olympics and its
downtown streets
were full of revellers who partied even though the liquor stores were
closed much of the
time.

That's because pot was everywhere, and several foreign commentators
remarked on its popularity. This is nothing new. Marijuana has been
essentially decriminalized in the Lower Mainland and the annual export
crop has been bigger than forestry for a decade.

Trafficking for export is still illegal in Canada, but it appears as
though one of the biggest markets, California, is likely to legalize
cannabis in the Nov. 2 elections.

The issue will be a referendum question on the ballot and a majority
voting yes would carry the force of law. It is being promoted by a
movement called "Tax Cannabis," designed to appeal to those voters who
refuse to allow tax hikes, or a curtailment of government services,
and have sent the state into near-bankruptcy.

Estimates are that sales of marijuana total US$14-billion every year.
Proponents talk about a US$1.4-billion tax on sales, but if the stuff
is taxed the same as cigarettes or liquor the government's take could
be up to US$14-billion. (The state's deficit last year was
US$42-billion.)

A tax on marijuana could be real money.

The "Governator" is leaving and the two principal competitors for the
job of running a state the economic size of France are both opposed to
legalization. But that doesn't matter in the wacky world of
"neverendums" in California.

Since the latest referendum forbid new taxes or cost cutting, the
result has been release of prisoners before sentences are completed
and a host of other loopy goings-on, including paying suppliers with
IOUs, not real money.

And the state is halfway there now. It legalized medical marijuana use
in the late 1990s.

This has pitted California against the federal government's Drug
Enforcement Agency, which has continued to harass and arrest pot
growers on the basis that some are a little too aggressive in their
marketing techniques.

Outright legalization will escalate this federal-state squabble, but
Barack Obama was sympathetic to lifting controls on pot during his
election campaign.

And for good reason. The substance is less harmful than alcohol and
could raise a bunch of tax dollars. Besides, Prohibition didn't work
in the 1920s and it doesn't work now.

It's silly that prisons and paddy wagons throughout the United States
are unfortunately full of people busted for a little bit of pot that
sells openly on Vancouver, or Toronto, street corners, as well as in
most parts of the world.

I predict that once California makes it legal, other states and
provinces will too, notably British California.