Pubdate: Sun, 29 Mar 2009
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2009 The Boston Herald, Inc
Contact:  http://news.bostonherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53
Author: Margery Eagan, Boston Herald Columnist
Cited: NORML http://www.norml.org/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Obama
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Jeffrey+Miron
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?420 (Marijuana - Popular)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/NORML (NORML)

JOINT RESOLUTION: TAXING POT JUST MAKES CENTS

It's time to legalize marijuana, tax it to death, then let struggling 
Joe Citizen - instead of Joe Dope Dealer - reap the pot profits.

The most popular question at President Obama's town hall meeting 
Thursday? Whether legalizing marijuana would help the economy and 
create jobs. You know: Pottery Barn goes Pottery Bong.

Now the pot posse may have stacked the e-mail deck. Still Obama, who 
once wanted to decriminalize pot, laughed off the inquiries. "I don't 
know what this says about the online audience," he quipped, then did 
his post-election about-face. "No, I don't think this would be a good 
strategy."

Actually, it would be a very good strategy. He's wrong. Enough 
already with these ancient mariner moralizers like ex-drug czar Bill 
Bennett, who preached reefer madness while gambling millions in Vegas 
and smoking two packs a day. A different generation's in charge now. 
Millions of Americans understand that you can get stoned in high 
school, in college, every post-collegiate Saturday night, yet remain 
a responsible, upstanding, taxpayer. They know because they've done it.

Ignoring hysterical politicians and law enforcement types around 
here, Massachusetts voted nearly two to one in November to 
decriminalize small amounts of marijuana. Has your neighborhood gone 
to pot? If we took the next step - legalize and tax it - we might not 
need toll hikes or 19-cent gas tax hikes and they'd surely be hiring 
at "Roach Brothers," or "Best Buds," or maybe even, I can't resist, 
"Restoration Weed-Wear."

If we legalized nationwide, we'd save billions immediately in 
enforcement and jailing costs. We'd reap many billions more per year 
in taxes. When Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron published his 
legalize-pot tax estimates in 2005, more than 500 professional 
economists, including Milton Friedman, signed on.

Miron was on CNN this week discussing the horrific drug war on the 
Mexico/U.S. border. He's long argued that violence is the inevitable 
norm in illegal, not legal, markets, whether in drugs, gambling, 
prostitution, or alcohol. We just never learn.

But legalizing pot isn't only about money. It's about our ridiculous 
citizen passivity. Why do we let congressional liars and thieves 
dictate what we can do, responsibly, in our living rooms? Who are 
they to take away our children's student loans over a joint?

NORML (The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) 
typically gets about $900 a day in online donations. Thursday and 
Friday, they got $3,500 each day.

By every possible metric I can employ," said NORML's executive 
director, Allen St. Pierre, "these last 24 hours have been the 
busiest I've seen."

Though St. Pierre was disappointed with Obama's flip-flop Thursday, 
he also knows the president could be his best advertisement. You may 
not like Obama's politics, but nobody would argue that pot-smoking 
and cocaine-snorting scrambled Obama's brain. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake