People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked inside, I’m out of range
I used to care… but things have changed
— from ‘Things Have Changed’ by Bob Dylan
I’d like to add my two cents worth to Bill Hudson’s recent series on marijuana. Having been a teenager in the 1960s, and a GI in southeast Asia, I have personal knowledge of use of the herb. I’ve smoked it in college dorms – and with Buddhist monks in rural Thailand. Those monks had been perfecting the quality for a millennia as a mind-expanding sacrament. You have to experience it to understand.
I quit smoking weed decades ago — except for rare occasions while visiting in-laws where it was legal.
When I returned from the war in southeast Asia I was suffering from PTSD — but nobody knew what that was back then. I spent the next several years self-medicating with weed, smoking nearly every evening just to be able to sleep at night.
But I realized it was dumbing me down and — worse, sapping my ambition. So I quit that self-destructive pattern.
What followed was an acceleration of achieving my goals, culminating in my legal career. As a prosecutor I refrained from illegal substances for obvious reasons.
I don’t smoke it now that I’ve retired because of my heart condition. I’m hesitant about edibles because no physician I’ve asked can tell me what effect they may have since my open-heart surgery. They tell me there is no research on the subject, and I haven’t been able to find any myself.
So I don’t really have a vested interest — so to speak — in the debate currently going on here in Florida about recreational legalization. I won’t be smoking it. Medicinal use is already legal here, so I can get edibles if I want them.
Based on my experiences since Colorado legalization, I’m conflicted about letting the recreational use genie out of the bottle here in Florida.
Do I think people should be criminally prosecuted for merely using weed? Emphatically NO!
As a prosecutor I handled many cases involving weed. If the charge was simple possession for personal use, I sent those cases to diversion programs if the defendant was eligible, or at most disposed of the case with a fine.
(The only exceptions were those cases that fell under what I call the ‘Al Capone’ doctrine. Capone was convicted of tax evasion when the government couldn’t get him off the streets for any of the murders, and other serious crimes, he was responsible for. I secured a couple of weed possession convictions based on that doctrine.)
But frequently possession of weed accompanied additional charges where it was found on the person when they were arrested for another crime. Quite often it was a violent crime or a crime of dishonesty like burglary or theft. In those cases, the weed charge was the least of the perps’ problems – and was usually dropped as part of a plea deal to the more serious charges.
Driving under the influence often included being in possession of weed. It’s amazing how many DUI cases result from the defendant being pulled over for a traffic offense, and the officer smelling weed in the vehicle. Smoking weed while driving is why they call it ‘dope’.
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the government pacified a segment of the population (the ‘Epsilons’) with the recreational drug SOMA which kept them content doing nothing — and not questioning what the government was up to. Life imitated art during our Wuhan virus pandemic.
Bill Hudson interviewed a dispensary owner who explained why they were considered an “essential business” and allowed to remain open during the pandemic shutdown, “For the marijuana industry, the reason we were essential, was because they wanted people to stay home. And the best way to keep them home was to keep them stoned. And maybe they won’t question why we’re keeping them home.”
I concur with that assessment. It’s also good for the primary business of government – collecting taxes!
In his classic treatise The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith — called the father of economics — said “There is one art that no government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.”
Taxes on weed, like liquor and tobacco, are “sumptuary” taxes — sometimes referred to as “sin tax” — and defined as “an excise or ad valorem tax applied to goods and services that support a habit viewed by society as undesirable.”
As Smith explains, sumptuary taxes are regressive – meaning they disproportionately impact those in the lower and middle income classes. This leads to evasion – to the benefit of the bureaucracy by creating the need for bigger budgets for enforcement.
Government benefits from both the tax, and its evasion! Smith made that observation over 200 years ago, and I explained how that works for law enforcement in contemporary America, here.
The other problem with a sumptuary tax is that it’s vulnerable to changing public morals. At one time cigarette smoking was as much a part of our culture as alcohol. Tobacco smoke permeated bars, restaurants, public transportation (even commercial airlines). Now tobacco smokers in public are lepers. Tax revenue from weed is making up for that lost from tobacco.
What if medical science concludes second-hand weed smoke is just as dangerous as tobacco smoke? Will there have to be a new sumptuary revenue stream? How about legalizing, and taxing, hallucinogenic shrooms? Wait ….. what?
Those are the intended consequences of legal weed. Next, I’ll suggest some unintended consequences…
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.