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Kansas Doesn't Want Drugs Dealt, But It Does Want To Pocket Some Profit

Next Tuesday, Columbians will vote on Proposition 1, an amendment to the
city's marijuana laws that would make this one of the most punitively
enlightened cities in the war on drugs. People caught with a misdemeanor
amount of marijuana, less than 35 grams, would be sent to city court rather
than county court. This would allow students to keep federal financial aid
and would keep an offender's permanent record clean. Right now, Columbia
cops can choose to take an offender to city or county court, which already
ranks Columbia high on the scale of reason. But Proposition 1 would take the
city more than one notch higher. It would make discrimination in these
matters impossible. Although the police might like the option of taking an
offender from a known drug house -- read: ghetto kid -- to county jail, it
would protect them from charges of unfairness and racism. That sounds
reasonable, right?

No matter how the vote turns out, at least Missourians can give themselves
credit for being more reasonable than their next-door neighbors to the west.
Kansas, in a perfect addition to its history of illogic (remember its stand
on Darwinism?), is one of "roughly 10 states" -- the Department of Revenue
is not sure how many, it seems -- that taxes illegal drugs. That's right. If
you want to become a (tax) law-abiding drug dealer in Kansas, you must buy
"drug stamps" from the state government. Like drugs, the stamps can be
bought anonymously. And like a drug dealer, Kansas takes cash and its
equivalent only. Sorry, no checks or credit cards.

It's easy to become a drug dealer in Kansas, at least as far as the state's
Department of Revenue is concerned. All that's necessary is a) to be in
Kansas and b) to possess more than 28 grams of marijuana. Whether you intend
to sell the weed seems to make no difference. No baggies, no scales, no
pager required. Drug dealing might be easy, but the taxes are steep -- $3.50
per gram for processed marijuana, $200 per gram for cocaine or
methamphetamine, $2,000 for 50 pills. And to make things more difficult,
Kansas is about as far from an offshore tax haven as a state can be.

Kansas, of course, thinks its taxation is perfectly reasonable. Here's the
state's case: "The fact that dealing marijuana and controlled substances is
illegal does not exempt it from taxation. Therefore, drug dealers are
required by law to purchase drug tax stamps." It's as snappy and specious a
syllogism as was ever coined, and it only gets better. The Department of
Revenue's Web site lists two more reasons for taxation of a group that
surely has no representation:

Taxing the Underground Economy: The fact that the business of dealing
marijuana and controlled substances is illegal does not exempt it from
taxation. Legitimate business transactions are taxed. (emphasis added)

So drug dealing is a legitimate business, is it? And it's recession proof.

Providing a Source of Revenue: 25 percent of drug tax collections are
allocated to the State's General Fund.

The General Fund is the portion of the state budget that, among other
things, pays teachers and floats public universities, thus making low
tuition at KU possible. Yet if a student is caught with a joint, he or she
loses federal financial aid. But whoever sold the student the joint,
provided he or she is an upstanding, tax-paying drug dealer, is contributing
to the welfare of Kansas' universities. But drugs are bad. ... And the
illogic continues.

Our neighbors have stumbled onto something so obvious -- a perfect argument
for legalization of drugs. States across the nation are broke, people smoke
pot, and if they paid taxes on those drugs, the government could make a nice
chunk of money each year. Tax it, control it, make money off it. Stop
sending people to prison for it. But Kansas' intentions seem malign, penal.
They'd like the dealer's car, the dealer's house; they'd like another book
to throw. Failure to pay the drug tax is a felony punishable by up to five
years in prison, fines of up to $10,000 and seizure of property. Kansas has
co-opted the logic of legalization and turned it on itself. It believes it
can have the benefits of legalization with the satisfaction of still
punishing stoner college kids who scored a deal on a misdemeanor amount of
weed. Twenty-eight grams of marijuana is a hefty Ziploc bag, but it's not a
trunkload.

Because matters are not likely to change, we've come up with a few
suggestions on how to make drug taxation a little hipper, a little more fun.
Drug stamps could feature a backdrop of Rastafarian colors behind the mugs
of drug-addled legends such as Jim Morrison, Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia,
Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Lou Reed. The stamps could be decorated with
the more absinthe-inspired paintings of Van Gogh. Hunter S. Thompson alone
could inspire an entire series of stamps. And because Kansas law states that
drug stamps can't be reused, dealers can take their old stamps, soak them in
LSD and sell them as novelty acid tabs at a slightly higher price. The
dealer makes more money; the dealer pays more in drug taxes. Everyone is
happy. It sounds absurd, but not much more so than the status quo.