Common Sense For New Hampshire

And then tax it!

All of you know that I’m strongly in favor of ending marijuana prohibition, but I have to admit that I cringe every time I hear someone offer the promise of increased tax revenues as a reason to do it.

It’s a bad reason.  We wouldn’t legalize murder and then tax it.  We wouldn’t legalize theft and then tax it.  (Actually we do, sort of.)  If it’s legitimately the government’s business to prohibit a certain activity, then they need to prohibit it.  But if certain activity is none of the government’s business then they need to butt out completely.

I am not enjoying my big cup of Cafe Bustello coffee this morning at the government’s pleasure.  I’m not enjoying it because I paid sales tax on it.  I’m enjoying it because it makes me happy and I have a right to make myself happy.

We need to legalize because adults have a right to smoke pot if it makes them happy.   Of course they should pay sales tax on it like we do on everything.  But a special marijuana tax would be a mistake.

We have this situation where the government is using “sin taxes” to decide what disfavored groups will be singled out to carry more than their fair share of the tax burden.  These sorts of laws are meant to divide us and not to bring us together.  They are the kind of tools that have been used by totalitarian governments throughout history.  And you never know when you will suddenly find yourself as part of a newly disfavored group.  Are you paying attention soda drinkers and french fry eaters?

Besides all that, why do people so universally think that it’s such a great thing to suck dollars out of the real-people-freely-spending-their-own-money economy and put it into the government-politics-cronyism-corruption-vote buying-back room deals economy?

I just don’t understand it.