Drug taxes in Kansas: an interesting comment

I was idly wandering through Stereotypography’s links tonight, and came across what sounded like something superficially/novelty-factor style interesting — URLDJs — and on their page was a comment on the drug tax levies in Kansas:

it c a n actually be a very effective way to counter drug trading at the micro-level. some big-shot narco-tycoon certainly will not give a second thought to it, but say you are a drug-retailer, dealing with individual orders, carrying well above 28 grams, say 50 grams of weed. if you got busted with untaxed spliff, both civil and criminal charges most likely are a bigger deterent than a couple of hours of community work for the pure possession or a brief jail-term for minor dealing in dope. if you paid the tax, however, you would have to price yourself out of the market. catch 22.

So, what it amounts to, or better, what it can amount to, is a seemingly lenient drug enforcement policy (unsanctioned possession, for example), while you heavily inflate drug-prices, lever penal taxes on unwanted consumption — go and buy a bottle of liquor in norway and you start wondering about the dimension penal taxes can take — and thus make sure that the super-rich can afford semi-legally to trade and smoke it up, while due to financial constraints, the poor will peddle and consume by risking jail-terms. A two-tier narco culture. that seems to be very republican. Actually, sammy-boy, you should have to agree, dope taxes are a good thing to have. ;-)

Posted at 7pm on 22/02/03 by Simone to the politics category.
Permalink · Add to del.icio.us