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Bill would put new tax on illegal drug trade
Mark Schreiner | StarNewsOnline.com | July 8, 2006

Raleigh | Instead of suing drug dealers, state Sen. Julia Boseman is now seeking to tax their trade.

The Democrat from Wilmington persuaded a Senate committee Friday to recommend a bill creating a tax on the sale of illegal drugs and putting the proceeds into a fund to compensate people hurt by drug abusers.

The program would be similar, but apart from, an existing state excise tax on illegal drugs. The excise tax generated $78 million between 1990 and 2004, according to the N.C. Department of Revenue. Tax bills are usually presented to people charged with possessing illegal drugs.

Originally, Boseman had sought to change state law to allow former drug users, parents, employers and others to sue drug dealers for damage caused by their customers. She chose to name the fund for Blaire Thompson, a Pender County teacher who died in 2004 from a heroin overdose.

Thompson's parents said they would have liked to have sued a drug dealer to get compensation for the things their daughter stole from them to support her habit.

Legal experts and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned whether the proposal would set a bad precedent for North Carolina law by allowing a person who participated in a crime, a drug buyer, to sue for damages.

"Instead of trying to change tort law, we thought we'd add to North Carolina's tax on illegal drugs," Boseman said. "Families won't have to sit through another trial, and there would be money available to help victims."

The new proposal, Senate Bill 1211, would create the Blaire Thompson Fund within the existing N.C. Crime Victims Compensation Commission. The bill would also establish an illegal drug transfer tax of $10 per gram of marijuana, $120 per gram of cocaine, $250 per gram of heroin, $100 per gram for other illegal drugs sold by weight and $250 for 10 doses of any drug in pill form or otherwise not sold by weight.

Unlike the current drug excise tax, which divides proceeds between local police and the state government's general fund, all the proceeds of the transfer tax would go to the compensation fund.

To get a payment a person must "have suffered damages" caused by the illegal use of a controlled substance.

The bill needs a hearing by the tax-writing Finance Committee before moving to the full Senate. If adopted by the Senate, it would still need the approval of the state House and the governor before becoming law.

Mark Schreiner: (919) 835-1434

mark.schreiner@starnewsonline.com

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Buzzby

This is the same tactic a number of municipalities are using to try and shut down the legal firearms industry. They want to sue the manufacturers for harm done with the tools they sell. So far, almost all of those suits have been thrown out of court .

This is ridiculous! Once a product leaves the seller's hands, the seller has absolutely no control over what is done with that product. Do we hold Ford and Chevy liable if someone uses one of their products to run someone over? Do we hold Sears liable if someone clouts a friend over the head with one of their claw hammers? Why should sellers of drugs be held liable if someone abuses one of their products or commits crimes to get the money to buy it?

Drug use is not drug abuse. Sellers have no control over what buyers do with their products. Like any other products, they can be used wisely or foolishly, peacefully or violently, in beneficial or in harmful ways.

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cepheus

when i read that article i can just hear a bunch of whiny babies crying that life hasn't gone the way they expected. all these people talking about suing and getting compensation for the harm a drug dealer supposedly indirectly caused their families.

well, not to pretend i don't sympathize with parents who lose a child to a drug overdose, because i totally sympathize, but hey, sometimes life gets shitty. you gonna sue someone and try to get a big payout to mask the fact that you can't accept life for what it is - a learning experience? when two people have a kid they do it knowing that anything might happen. sometimes having a kid can make the parents' lives miserable for any number of reasons, including dying of a heroin overdose. additionally a child's upbringing has a huge influence on how he or she will act as an adult, so in the majority of drub abusers it is not a stretch to say that the habit has at least one of its many roots in the person's ubringing, from the exact same parents who want to sue for damages. (i don't know the parents mentioned in this article, so i'm not trying to say they didn't bring up their daughter right, i'm speaking in generalities)

if i was raised better i probably wouldn't smoke as much weed as i do now, but it is my choice and mine alone to do this. when i complain about the money i spend i can't blame my dealer or my parents, just the guy who decides to buy it - me. if for some reason all this pot smoking began to adversely affect my health, i would have no one to blame but myself.

all that being said, if the only two options were to pay a tax or get sued, you know i would pay a tax. given the big penalties for selling drugs though i dont think either one should be an option.

Tolerance4all

IMO the goverment is liable for allowing criminals to distribute potentially harmful substances. If drug sales were in the open, then purity and dosage could be regulated. Altered substances of unknown strength cause most of the deaths related to drug use. Unless someone is commiting suicide why would they knowingly ingest an overdose amount?