Arizona Lawmakers Want 300% Medical Marijuana Tax OpposingViews / NORML / "Radical" Russ Belleville / 1,31,2011 This story shows that although AZ is going about this the wrong way, they have the right idea. Yes, taxing marijuana will generate over a billion dollars a year for the state, but that tax needs to be a reasonable tax on legal marijuana and not a 300% tax on medical marijuana! 300% of something is 3 times that amount! So if your medical marijuana costs $100, Representative Steve Farley's proposed tax would add $300 to the $100 medicine to make it cost $400! What kind of evil person does that to the sick and dying? TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) – When Arizonans voted to legalize marijuana for medical use, they likely didn't realize it could also solve the state's budget problems. But state leaders found a loophole in the law that opens the door for a pot tax. State law exempts prescriptions from being taxed, but Attorney General Tom Horne says since marijuana would be sold to patients with “written certification†from doctors, that allows the drug to be taxed, “That decision, having been made to avoid the word prescription and use certification instead, there are consequences of that choice, and one of the consequences is that the exemption for prescription no longer applies.†Representative Steve Farley… wants to increase the pot tax to 300-percent. He says the extra money would be enough to fill the 1.1 billion dollar state deficit for next year. He tells KGUN 9, he doesn't believe increasing the tax to 300-percent would encourage people to buy the drug illegally. He told KGUN 9, “I think being able to have this tax in place may make it a little more expensive, but it will make it legal, and it would also cause money to go towards inspecting it's quality and it's safety.†[Russ adds: We use "recommendation" instead of "prescription" because the latter runs afoul of federal laws for controlled substances. It's why Arizona's original 1996 medical marijuana initiative was never implemented, because any doctor that "prescribes" cannabis loses his license. So "recommendation" is the loophole word we used to get it pseudo-legal. I'm afraid the Arizona AG may be right on this one - medical marijuana is not a "prescription" so it can be taxed. Should it be? Hell, no! So reformers, add something protecting medicine from exorbitant taxation in the next initiative.] That ought to raise the profits for the black market!!!! Does anyone think they will ever get it? Raising the price of marijuana just increases the cost to the patient and the profit margins of the cartels.
people would just buy from the street, they have a card, still legal for them to possess it. They would be retarded to do this, it won't work
god that would cause so many problems, they would buy cheaper shit off the street and then use their card to say its legit.. man oh man.. major facepalm
Not to mention that you can just grow your own if you live more than a certain distance from a dispensary. [25 miles?]
Yep...this Will Humble and his mary band of pot nazis refuse to impose the will of the voters. Its truely sad.
So because a representative can't do anything in his state legislature to balance the budget, he turns to adding a 300% mark-up on medicine. This guy is a sick fuck. This takes the degradation of politics lower than I thought possible.
Yep..because see..they're government, so they believe they know all and their opinion is more important than the citizens that elected them. They are paid and elected to REPRESENT the people. The people of AZ spoke and passed mmj...3 TIMES NOW! The people voted to allow cannibis as medicine and these jackoffs dont agree philsophically with that so they will look at anything possible to sabatoge what the voters passed. Its sick, sad and pathetic!