LET'S TAX MARIJUANA TO DEATH LIKE TOBACCO

If you're at all interested in the ongoing debate over pot
legalization, look south right now to cash-starved California.

It's smoking hot there, with arguments being marshalled for and
against Proposition 19, which would allow people 21 and over to
possess and cultivate marijuana for personal use -- and let local
governments regulate and tax commercial production of it.

Cannabis Culture chief Jodie Emery, wife of Prince of Pot Marc Emery,
told me Thursday the proposed legislation is contentious, even among
California growers. Some fear passage of the initiative, on the Nov.
2 California statewide ballot, will cut into their profits or even
drive them out of business.

"The price of marijuana is going to drop drastically if it's
available in a legal market and people are allowed to buy it and grow
it themselves legally," noted Emery, whose husband is in a federal
prison in Seattle awaiting sentencing on seed-selling charges.

But no one doubts the importance of Proposition 19, otherwise known
as the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. "It's the most
significant, important legislation related to marijuana we have ever
seen," Emery said.

There's a compelling reason for this. California needs all the tax
money it can get to prop up its ailing public sector. In fact, the
city of Maywood in the Los Angeles area recently laid off all its
city employees and is outsourcing all its operations.

And, yes, Emery is right: The arguments for and against Proposition
19 don't fall into neatly defined camps. A former San Jose police
chief and a retired Los Angeles police deputy chief are among those
supporting it. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is opposed. And a recent
poll shows public opinion is evenly divided.

Emery pointed out that, if it passes, the bloom would be off the B.C.
bud export industry. "We will see a lot of growers move away from
here to California," she said. "And that would happen all across
North America, because why grow where's there a lot of risk involved,
when you can go where there's none?"

Senior Simon Fraser University criminology professor Rob Gordon said
it's likely big business might get involved. He noted that, when pot
legalization was debated in England in the 1960s, at least one major
tobacco firm geared up its London plant for production.

Gordon, a former police officer, calls Proposition 19 a
"revolutionary development." He himself favours the yes side,
pointing to "the absurdity of trying to prohibit something that just
simply manages to produce more crime . . . and more organized crime."

However, he doesn't think passage of the proposition would result in
any immediate legislative change on this side of the border, since
marijuana laws here are federal, not provincial.

"I think if you get a Liberal government in place, we might see
something different happening," he told me. "But I don't think that
Harper and his crowd have any appetite for liberalizing drug
regulation in this country right now."

What do I think? I favour Proposition 19. I think it's high time we
stopped treating pot as a special weed -- and starting taxing it to
death like tobacco.