- "I was in a shop the day after the amendment had passed here, and the shop owners were getting calls left and right from people asking if they could just come in and buy marijuana legally," Breathes tells NPR's Jacki Lyden. "People are just expecting to be able to walk into these medical stores right away."
But they can't — at least not until next year. Like Washington, Colorado still needs to set up a regulatory framework to handle what is expected to be a big expansion of its marijuana market, even though the state already has more medical marijuana dispensaries than it has Starbucks.
No, it shouldn't. Right now the massive risk associated with growing drives up prices. Once that risk is gone, prices will fall (if it were untaxed). Taxes should then be added to a point where supply/demand reaches an equilibrium and therefore revenue is maximized. And, I would suspect, this will still be less than it is now. Taxes shouldn't be added willy nilly. They should be carefully calculated to maximize revenue, taking into account the market's response to pricing.
That's now how equilibrium and taxes work, unfortunately. Taxes by their nature interfere with maximization of producer and consumer revenue, because that's not what the government cares about. With marijuana, an additional effect will come into play because the government will probably stick it with an extremely high "sin tax." This is all speculation at the moment but we'll know more next year.
You're right, they do work like that. But they shouldn't, and they don't have to. If the government wants to maximize its tax revenue, then that makes a lot of sense. What doesn't make a lot of sense is the government telling me what is a sin and what isn't, when my "sinning" only has an effect on me.
This is the extreme libertarian point of view, and of course in many cases is dead wrong. For instance, the phrase sin tax was essentially coined with regard to cigarettes -- and smoking cigarettes in public has been proven multiple times to have massive negative health effects on other people. This is not to say that the libertarian POV is always wrong, or that smoking a cig always hurts others, but just to point out that libertarians can often be tempted to apply absolutes to situations that don't call for them.What doesn't make a lot of sense is the government telling me what is a sin and what isn't, when my "sinning" only has an effect on me.
Eh? Black markets generate an inflation on goods. And vendors can be completely unscrupulous with customer seeing look course for reconcile. Those drive prices in dollars and cost in anxiety and fear. But please explain your position better than, "nu-uh".
My guess is that eventually, Marijuana will be something that many people grow in their own gardens and share with pride. Have you seen the Johnsons recent crop of buds? You really must try them, they're simply divine.
I have to say, even though I stop smoking pot a long time ago, this is one of the things I'm really glad to have been wrong about. I must have had endless discussions about whether this would actually happen in my lifetime, and I just couldn't conceive it happening. Probably because I was looking at it wrongly, and expecting it come down the federal legislative channel. Nice!
I no longer smoke either. I grew up in the Ann Arbor MI area where possession has always been a minor misdameanor. Every year Ann Arbor hosts the "Hash Bash" and people openly smoke while speakers talk about legalization etc. because of my proximity to this, I've always thought it would eventually be legalized especially in a post Clinton (I didn't inhale) country. I will not be shocked when all non violent drug offenses are merely fines and carry no jail time.