Marijuana: San Francisco Supervisor Wants to Make "License, Regulate, and Tax" Official City Policy
If San Francisco City Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi has his way, voters there will go to the polls in June to decide whether the city should tax and regulate marijuana growing and distribution. On Tuesday, Mirkarimi proposed a ballot measure that would make it official city policy to "license, regulate, and tax the cultivation and sale of cannabis."
[inline:rossmirkarimi.jpg align=left caption="Ross Mirkarimi"]"It's time that we have a regulating system in place," said Mirkarimi, who said regulations could address issues such as where grows could take place, how much could be grown, and what safety precautions are needed.
Mirkarimi said the city could not tax marijuana sales without authorization by the state. A bill by fellow San Franciscan Assemblyman Tom Ammiano passed an Assembly committee this week, but is effectively dead for the session after failing to get a hearing before another committee, but an initiative that would tax and regulate marijuana sales by local option is likely to be on the ballot in November.
Mirkarimi must still won the support of a majority of the Board of Supervisors to get the issue on the ballot.
Comments
this is about the same thing
this is about the same thing as the original laws against mj - the tax stamp law!!!
This is a step forward, but it is not enough.
A fundamental and Constitutional right of all Americans, and all people on Earth, is the freedom to intelligently and responsibly use marijuana for their spiritual and medicinal needs without the risk of persecution. That right goes beyond some government policy that allows the slavemasters to control and feed off the natural instinct of all people to use marijuana for their medicinal and spiritual purposes.
Any "legislation" passed must allow any person to grow a marijuana plant for personal use without the risk of any prosecution whatsoever. It is reasonable to have a modest sales tax put on those who would grow enough to make a profit off of their herbal product.
San Francisco must make sure that this bill specically states that the Federal Government has no Constitutional right to impose Federal pressure on local law enforement agencies to persecute anyone using cannabis in their city. Also, the DEA must flat out end their assault on the civil right of people to responsibly and safely use and/or grow marijuana.
In reply to This is a step forward, but it is not enough. by Lone Wolf 54 (not verified)
Heck yeah.
Fat chance of that, unfortunately. That's not a slight to you, just an infuriating truth about our Slavemasters (haha, nice btw :D). They are on the brink of total, Caesarian, Ayatollan, Dictatorial, Demigod Control. People have never been so domesticated. We're hand-fed, oversexed, drugged up, depressed, fat, lazy, we got our eyes glued to the TV or computer, people hardly go outside. We've be trained to buy certain things, live a certain way, to be embarrassed and ashamed of that which makes us unique, but to never feel such shame when we fail morally and do something bad. I'm generalizing, obviously, but even the best of us that see what's happening and truly give a damn have yet to stop it from happening. I think, in order for a modern, technological society to truely be considered free, we'd have to boycott the corporations, the hand-fed indulgence and hedonistic pleasure, the government itself, along with every hand out. We'd be living in 150 million self-sufficient fortresses. No central grid. Get our own water, grow our OWN food, produce our own CLEAN solar/wind/hydroelectric/geothermal energy. Everyone would have a gun, which would make people think twice before messing with each other. Screw culture and art and indulgence and living in the moment. I'd rather be free, honestly. Simple pleasures are the best, we just lost the ability to fully appreciate them.
Get it over with . . .
Legalize it already!
End the madness - end cannabis prohibition.
That failing fight needs to
That failing fight needs to stop failing! Legalize my medicine! How many people die because of pot? Really though? Blah blah blah, pot haters need to smoke a blunt and grow the fuck up.
Let's think...
Let's think here for a second. No offense to this Mirkarimi guy, or the person that wrote the article, but are you listening to yourselves? Regulate? Tax? If Marijuana is ever legalized the government will be more controlling with it than ever. I agree with ending all the bullsh*t arrests and imprisonment over simply owning or cultivating a plant given freely to us from the Earth in the first place, but you tax it, and regulate, and legislate, and the next thing you know, you can't even own a damned plant without a license, and people will be going to jail left and right for tax evasion, just like moonshiners do nowadays. You can get twenty years in prison if they even THINK you're using a still to make your own liquor, and why? Because it's a REAL crime? Or because the government isn't getting their cut? Marijuana prices would go through the roof. You think smoking tobacco's expensive? Haha, wait till the government gets ahold of your green.
In all honesty I'd much rather see extreme decriminalization than legalization. That way the government keeps their greasy paws off it, prices stay low, it's easier to get without being whatever ridiculous age they definitively decide you have to be to use it (as though one size fits all or something), and yet most people, excepting bigtime growers, maybe, will not go to jail.
Regardless I support your principles, and I'd like to give a big thanks to everyone on here... just for caring. We're not just a bunch of stupid potheads and junkies. Criminalizing plants and chemicals is idiotic and massively arrogant. I'm talking God Complex arrogance. Drugs were legal for about the last 6000 years in every society the world round. We must just be extra-civilized. That was sarcasm by the way.
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