On the same November ballot that will have Californians decide whether to legalize marijuana, Long Beach voters will decide whether the city that spawned Snoop Dogg should tax recreational marijuana.
That's right, not medical cannabis but recreational pot, the kind consumed by the pride of LBC and the world's cannambassador.
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Paul Eakins gets the scoop in the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
The Long Beach City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to place a
recreational marijuana tax on the Nov. 2 ballot, but it would go into
effect only if California voters approve Prop 19 at the same
time.
Passage in Long Beach would requires 50 percent of voters to approve the
tax.
Recreational marijuana businesses would be taxed 15 percent of
their gross revenues, while cultivation sites would pay $25 per square foot, and a
minimum $1,000 business license tax would be applied to the businesses.
Ironically, a council vote earlier in the evening to tax both recreational and medical
marijuana failed due to a 4-4 tie.
The council was perhaps swayed by the testimony of medical marijuana users and Los Angeles County Sheriff
Lee Baca, who showed up at City Hall to speak
against taxing medical weed–for different reasons.
Patients obviously don't want a tax on their meds, but Baca is against taxing any kind of pot because he considers it all illegal and imposing a levy would legitimize it.
Later into the evening, a tax only on recreational pot returned and, after hashing out the details (sorry), it got the unanimous nod.
Of course, the tax will go up in smoke (sorry again) if Prop 19 loses. Right now, it's behind in the polls, but supporters have raised more money than their
opponents.
Campaign finance reports filed Monday show two groups supporting the
initiative raised more than $316,000 between April 1 and June 30 and
have nearly $162,000 cash on hand.
The main group opposing the initiative has nearly $19,000 cash on hand and raised about $41,000.
Surely some well-timed ads featuring Snoop could turn the tide in favor of legalization in his home state and taxation in his hometown.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.