Marijuana tax gaining steam in California

There’s nothing like a good crisis to jolt society from a lot of its ill-conceived rules of thumb, and California’s ballot initiative to fully legalize marijuana reinforces this point. I wrote a few months ago about the win-win situation that is marijuana legalization: users can enjoy their product free of social and legal harassment, and governments get to raise revenue. Moreover, the group most affected, marijuana smokers, actually wants the tax; where else can you find a group of Americans asking for taxation? Taxation is legitimation.

The lede on the NYTimes article is great, “Perhaps only in California could a group of marijuana smokers call themselves fiscal realists.” Though a similar measure failed in 1972, there are two additional positive factors this go around. First, medicial marijuana is a fact of life in California, so citizens are primed to the substance’s innocuous effects. With AG Eric Holder saying he will not prosecute medicinal marijuana users, fear and stigma around the medicinal use has largely disappeared. Second, supporters are, rightly, framing the ballot measure in terms of revenue generation and generally avoiding defending marijuana itself. They estimate the tax will generate $1 billion per year, a substantial sum against California’s $20 billion deficit. Finally, and most importantly, a majority of Californians in several polls support full legalization.

A Zogby poll in May 2009 found that 52 percent of Americans favor legalization. And Zogby is a right-of-center polling organization.