Marijuana.com

Lothar121

It's Time to Enact New State Marijuana Policy
Lahontan Valley News | 06/20/06

Nevada voters will once again take up a marijuana ballot initiative this fall, an issue muddied in rhetoric from both sides. The Regulation of Marijuana Initiative will appear on ballots in November. It would allow those 21 years old and older to legally possess, use and transfer one ounce or less of marijuana. Penalties are also stiffened for those who drive under the influence of marijuana or sell it to minors. Use in public would be prohibited.

For a $1,000 annual license fee, state-licensed retailers would be able to sell marijuana. An excise tax of $45 per ounce would be collected by the state from wholesalers. Sales tax would be the same as other products. Half of the profits from related licensing fees and taxes would be used for substance abuse treatment and education.

It's time to pass this multi-pronged approach to marijuana regulation and end years of speculation and fruitless debates.

What the initiative offers is a chance for voters to change a decades-long war on marijuana that has failed to curb its prevalence among Nevadans of all ages. Long compared to the country's failed prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s, current marijuana laws foster an illegal market. Nevadans who use marijuana legally for medicinal purposes are forced to grow their own or obtain it through illicit sources.

Detractors of the initiative argue that marijuana is a gateway drug that leads to use of more dangerous substances. But the same could be said of caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, sex or any other activity that stimulates the brain's pleasure zones.

Some of the above mentioned activities are legal and regulated in Nevada. In fact, the state's most powerful industry caters to those same visceral pleasures.

In a state where prostitution is legal in certain counties, bars are not required to close and children can legally possess and use tobacco, objections to marijuana legalization on a moral basis seem hypocritical. Education and parental involvement affect a person's decisions more profoundly than state policy.

The initiative would give law enforcement and the judicial system more resources to aggressively pursue a far more destructive and insidious substance: Methamphetamine. State-licensed marijuana retailers will reduce marijuana's value in the criminal market.

Those who view marijuana as a blight on society have yet to offer an effective solution of how to stop its spread through society or better fund law enforcement. Continuation of the ill-funded, half-hearted campaigns of the past is little more than veiled acceptance of its current widespread and illegal use.

If governments won't embrace efforts to successfully eliminate marijuana use and distribution, then regulate it, tax it and transfer the money from drug dealers' pockets to worthwhile endeavors. Vote yes for the Regulation of Marijuana Initiative Nov. 7.

__________________

Donate. Write. Make a difference.. Posting Guidelines | Marijuana Policy Project | NORML | DPA | Drug WarRant | Media Awareness Project

 

Abomonog

$45 tax at the wholesale level? Ouch! Might make it cheaper to buy it underground anyways.

But that's exactly what the doctor ordered! Hopefully it works.

__________________
It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys attack!

reggie_the_dog

lets imagine that you can grow outdoor 6 percent thc cannabis and get a half pound per plant. To grow fifty pounds you would need 100 female plants, so you start off with 200 plants (pehaps 250 seeds). If the whole system is legal the seeds for 6 percent thc weed would not be too expensive, anyway you grow a garden and you want to sell it. If there is a 45 dollar per ounce wholesale tax, and you want to make a profit, you have to charge at least 45 + overhead costs+profit margin.

considering that, wholesale, 6 percent thc weed can often cost 60 dollars or even 40 dollars on the black market (500 to 700 a pound) it would indeed be cheaper to buy in the black market.

I think this is too much tax.

Why dont they do a study first to find out what the cost of producing various thc quantity cannabis would be in a legal market, compare it to the cost of simillar cannabis in the black market, and then charge a PERCENTAGE of the sale price in tax without making the legal cannabis more costly than the illegal variety.

Tolerance4all

Recalculate, a 1/4lb of good commercial goes for $450. 1lb should go for $1350.

Abomonog

Because that tax is to offset the impending loss of federal funding across the board that will happen if the bill passes. The Feds have been threatening complete cut off for any state that goes green for over a decade. That's part of the reason these bills die so easily. When there is federal drug policy officers at the debate silently reminding everyone that if the bill passes the feds will pull their education and highway funding while still requiring their taxpayers to pay for it, such bills go away very quick. Nevada's tax plan shows that that is exactly what the state expects to happen and is looking at a loss of hundreds of millions in federal cash.
I'll bet that Alaska's flip-flopping is due to federal threats.

 

KWhite

You might as well accept that level of tax and figure it is going to take a good fifteen years before we see it drop- Once the business people get rich enough to start lobbying state legislatures for better conditions and taxes.

Until then, it will be the blood money paid to keep from being a criminal for smoking a plant.

Grow your own, if people are buying it and smoking it, if the scent of weed is no longer a reason to call the cops-

Grow your own.

At least you won't go to jail for it.

__________________
"Your mind is your own, your body as well, from the soul we need not speak, tend it well, making those decisions you deem worthy, aware all responsibility is in your hands when the smoke clears" Kelly L. White

"It is a principle of natural justice that when bad men make bad laws, or when unprincipled authorities compromise good ones, citizens are justified in protecting themselves from the very authority that compromised law and order." Gandhi

Our Posting Guidelines

LowIze99

How much do you think it would be to buy an ounce from one of the liscenced stores?

Tolerance4all

Lets go with Reggie's plant numbers. I am doing a lot of guessing so keep that in mind.

Farmer buys 250 seeds @ $5.00 per seed = $1,250.00. lets double that for care of the plants $2,500.00.

100 females @ 8 ounces = 800 oz. Tax is 800 oz. * $45.00 = $36,000.00 + $2,500.00 = $38,500.00 / 800 oz. = $48.12 per oz. + $26.88 per oz. labor & profit = $75.00 per oz. to retailer. $26.88 * 800 = $21,504.00 L&P for farmer. I am not sure what the labor costs would be for the farmer. I am guessing that 100 plants could easily be grown on one acre. Think about ten acres of Bud profit. Even if the farmer had to pay out $100,000.00 per year labor $115,000.00 profit per ten acres sounds like gold to me.

Retailer $1,000.00 per year lincense + 2,000.00 per month rent & utilites = $25,000.00 per year. If they sell a 1/4 oz. for $30.00 thats 11.25 per 1/4 oz. profit @ 50 quarters per day = $562.50 per day * 312 days = $175,000.00 - $25,000.00 - $50,000.00 (labor costs) = $100,000.00 per year profit. I don't have enough info to state that this is workable. It looks pretty good to me. I would say that this could be adjusted to $25.00 per 1/4 oz. or lower, which would be 1/2 the black market price for a 1/4 oz. I don't know what kind of profits farmers and retailers expect. If these figures are even close to accurate I would grow or sell for a living.

LowIze99

I would smoke a lot more if I could buy 1/4 oz for 25 bucks.

Buzzby

Why would seeds cost $5 each if the plant was legal to grow? The only reason they're so expensive is because of prohibition. Hemp seed would be sold in 50 pound sacks, like seed corn, and probably cost no more than $50.

There are 43,560 square feet in an acre. If you gave each plant 16 square feet (a 4 foot square), you could put 2,722 plants on an acre of land.

Why would you need any help tending to 800 plants or even 2,722? Most farm "labor" these days is done by implements a farmer hooks up to a tractor. As happens in countries that already grow pot as a field crop, you'd have to hire some people at harvest time, but that's it.

__________________