MARIJUANA TAX

State Needs to Meet Responsibilities Before It Claims Share of Revenue

What part of accountability doesn't the state of California
understand? State government can't be bothered with providing a
coherent framework for the dispensation of medical marijuana, but it
will be happy to slap a tax on anyone who sells it.

On Sunday, the Sacramento Bee reported that the state Board of
Equalization has served notice that the sellers of medical marijuana
must pay state and local sales taxes.

If medical marijuana is reaching people who need it, this means the
state tax agency is eager to take money from people seeking relief
from cancer or AIDS.

It remains to be demonstrated, of course, that current practice
guarantees that marijuana reaches the people who need it. Absent
state regulation, there is a patchwork of local rules that sometimes
becomes a pretext for use by people who want to smoke marijuana
because, well, they want to smoke marijuana.

In that way, medical marijuana and Proposition 215 get dragged into
the politics of legalizing pot -- a separate subject.

If the state wants to tax people who are sick -- a cruel idea -- it
needs to to meet its responsibilities by establishing common-sense
rules for the prescription and distribution of medical marijuana.