As the citizens as well as legislators of Colorado were no
doubt marveling in astonishment at the seismic $5 million figure for just the
first week of legalized marijuana sales, Alaska Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell received
a petition to legalize recreational use. With over 45,000 signatures, of which
only 30,169 are sufficient, the petition correlates with polls in early 2013
revealing that 54 percent of voters support the legalization.[1]
As with many other governmental matters, the devil is in the details.
Already,
the legislative proposal would levy a $50 tax on each ounce of pot sold. Just imagine if such a tax were levied on
each ounce of alcohol sold! Alaska
lawmakers may have insisted on the exorbitant tax as part of the proposal from a
desire to bilk the consumers as if they were a golden egg (or bowl), or to
discourage them on moral or public health grounds from ingesting the particular
product. The “crowding out” effect on State taxing power due to more and more
federal taxation was certainly a political force behind the support of
legislatures in Colorado, Washington, and Alaska starved for revenue.
Yet
the hypocrisy practically leaps off the page in Bill Parker’s statement that
marijuana is “a substance objectively less harmful than alcohol.”[2]
Parker had been a legislator and the Alaska Public Safety Commissioner. Similar
hypocrisy infects the comparison with tobacco, in that at least one study in
2012 reports that moderate pot recreational use does not harm the lungs whereas
cigarette use does.[3] So
the proposal’s prohibition of pot-smoking in public (as already was the case in
Colorado) is at the very least irrational, if not reefer madness unplugged. Even
the restrictions on drinking alcohol in public may be excessively paranoid, given the passing of the religious taboo against alcohol.
Nevertheless,
the proposed prohibition on public smoking of marijuana (without a
corresponding ban on tobacco use in outdoor public places on account of the
danger posed by second-hand smoke) did not stop Tim Hinterberger, one of the proposal's principal sponsors and
a professor of developmental biology at the University of Alaska in Anchorage,
from accepting the proposed system of “sensible regulation,” not to mention
taxation.[4]
“Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and sensible
regulation will bolster Alaska’s economy by creating jobs and generating
revenue for the state." The professor cheers the end of the black market
in pot without realizing that the proposed $50 tax per ounce would keep the underground
alive.
Generally speaking, the highest tax rate does not necessarily proffer
the most tax revenue. One could even say that the more greedy and unreasonable
a sales tax, the more the underground market can be expected to thrive. Once unleashed, freedom naturally finds its own way home.
In
short, it would seem that irrational exuberance is not limited to Wall Street.
Perhaps the real question is why human beings have so much trouble getting over
not only prejudice and moralizing, but also overreacting to the unknown. It is
as if legislators and regulators assume that regulations cannot be added if
needed as unforeseen dangers are uncovered or encountered. The sheer rigidity
and overreaction as evinced in the regulation of the recreational use of pot
may even point to a subterranean fault in the American psyche. Perhaps at least
some of the widespread pot use stems from the natural frustration in being repeatedly
slapped in the face by a hypertrophic fear of change and the supporting
pathological ignorance that can’t be wrong and presumes itself as fully
justified in snatching whatever authority it has.
[i]
Hunter Stuart, “Marijuana in Alaska Gets One Step Closer to Full Legalization,”
The Huffington Post, January 8, 2014.
[ii]
Ibid.
[iii]
Mikaela Conley, “Marijuana
Smoke Not as Damaging as Tobacco, Says Study,” ABC News, January 19, 2012.
[iv]
Stuart, “Marijuana.”
