[420 Girl]

If you're at all interested in the ongoing debate over pot legalization, look south right now to cash-starved California.

It's smoking hot there, with arguments being marshalled for and against Proposition 19, which would allow people 21 and over to possess and cultivate marijuana for personal use -- and let local governments regulate and tax commercial production of it.

Cannabis Culture chief Jodie Emery, wife of Prince of Pot Marc Emery, told me Thursday the proposed legislation is contentious, even among California growers. Some fear passage of the initiative, on the Nov. 2 California statewide ballot, will cut into their profits or even drive them out of business.

"The price of marijuana is going to drop drastically if it's available in a legal market and people are allowed to buy it and grow it themselves legally," noted Emery, whose husband is in a federal prison in Seattle awaiting sentencing on seed-selling charges.

But no one doubts the importance of Proposition 19, otherwise known as the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. "It's the most significant, important legislation related to marijuana we have ever seen," Emery said.

There's a compelling reason for this. California needs all the tax money it can get to prop up its ailing public sector. In fact, the city of Maywood in the Los Angeles area recently laid off all its city employees and is outsourcing all its operations.

And, yes, Emery is right: The arguments for and against Proposition 19 don't fall into neatly defined camps. A former San Jose police chief and a retired Los Angeles police deputy chief are among those supporting it. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is opposed. And a recent poll shows public opinion is evenly divided.

Emery pointed out that, if it passes, the bloom would be off the B.C. bud export industry. "We will see a lot of growers move away from here to California," she said. "And that would happen all across North America, because why grow where's there a lot of risk involved, when you can go where there's none?"

Senior Simon Fraser University criminology professor Rob Gordon said it's likely big business might get involved. He noted that, when pot legalization was debated in England in the 1960s, at least one major tobacco firm geared up its London plant for production.

Gordon, a former police officer, calls Proposition 19 a "revolutionary development." He himself favours the yes side, pointing to "the absurdity of trying to prohibit something that just simply manages to produce more crime . . . and more organized crime."

However, he doesn't think passage of the proposition would result in any immediate legislative change on this side of the border, since marijuana laws here are federal, not provincial.

"I think if you get a Liberal government in place, we might see something different happening," he told me. "But I don't think that Harper and his crowd have any appetite for liberalizing drug regulation in this country right now."

What do I think? I favour Proposition 19. I think it's high time we stopped treating pot as a special weed -- and starting taxing it to death like tobacco.


NewsHawk: Ganjarden: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: The Province
Author: Jon Ferry
Contact: The Province
Copyright: 2010 Postmedia Network Inc.
Website: Let's tax marijuana to death like tobacco


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