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Pro-marijuana ad pushes pot as Calif. budget fix
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SAN FRANCISCO — A pro-marijuana group is launching another television bid to legalize pot in California — this time with the pitch that legalizing and taxing the drug could help solve the state's massive budget deficit.
The 30-second spot, airing Wednesday and paid for by the Marijuana Policy Project, features a retired 58-year-old state worker who says state leaders "are ignoring millions of Californians who want to pay taxes."
"We're marijuana consumers," says Nadene Herndon of Fair Oaks, who says she began using marijuana after suffering multiple strokes three years ago. "Instead of being treated like criminals for using a substance safer than alcohol, we want to pay our fair share."
State lawmakers are bitterly debating how to close a $26.3 billion budget deficit that likely means cuts to state services.
In February, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, introduced a bill to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol. Bill supporters estimate the state's pot industry could bring in more than $1 billion in taxes.
The ad will air on several cable news channels and network broadcast affiliates in Los Angeles, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay area, according to the Marijuana Policy Project.
The group said in a statement that three California stations — KABC-TV in Los Angeles, KGO-TV of San Francisco and KNTV-TV in San Jose — refused to air the ad.
Representatives from the three stations did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press seeking comment.
In an e-mail to the group, a KNTV account executive said the station's standards department had rejected the ad.
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Don't get me wrong, I think pot should be legal and taxed. But the thought that JUST taxing ganga will fix California's financial problems proves that some Legislators out there are smoking the "doobage", regularly.
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Schteveo is a law abiding citizen
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8 comments:
I agree with you Steve. Legalizing pot is long overdue. If it weren't for the fact that govt. hates to give-up control of anything, i think it would've been done long ago. There are several small towns in northern Mexifornia who's entire economies are based on the growing and sale of Mary-J, without any tax-collecting benefit to the people.
There is (and has been) much scientific evidence to show marijuana has some significant value in many different medical areas. Something tells me that if the huge drug companies were allowed to produce and sell weed, it would be legalized next Tuesday.
Just like with gambling. It's not ok if the private citizen does it, but the gov't games are pushed like crack to a whore
Even if you disinclude the revenue from taxation in your calculations, how much will be saved simply by the fact that there won't be any money being spent trying to enforce the unenforcable law?
No pot users in jails. No court rooms tied up for pot cases. No law enforcement spending money on sting operations for pot.
It has been estimated that MJ is the second largest agricultural product of the entire state of California, and some even estimate that it is #1. This is supposedly an illegal, banned substance. Think about it, when an illegal, banned substance is your first or second largest agricultural product, don't you think that the laws have failed?
Don't you think that failed law should not be law at all?
Spider,
this one I don't think is about control. It's about fear and morality. Fear of "drugged out crazy people" running through grade schools, humping the children. There are still people who think "Reefer Madness" is true.
And the gub'ment would have much more control over drugs, if THEY ran distribution, taxation, etc. like they do with alcohol, steel, sugar, etc, etc, etc.
I've been a believer in legalization, taxation, education for many years.
Goober,
you make sense. We currently enjoy the same kinds of idiot laws, gang shootings, graft, greed and extortion, as they had during Prohibition.
You simply cannot legislate morality. And there is something in the human psyche that looks for altering our mental state.
Combine those two and you get a thriving drug trade.
"It has been estimated that MJ is the second largest agricultural product of the entire state of California, and some even estimate that it is #1."
MJ? Michael Jackson? I don't know about him being an "agricultural product"... well, I guess he is now... but in California I'd say he is #1 since 50% more watched his show than they did the inauguration.
Yeah, but they were all stoned.
Is there nothing that the Left won't sell for money?
Could give a new defination to 'Sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom'.
RC
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