And in this case, sorta sideways, marijuana. Congratulations, Government of California, you’ve single handedly lowered the demand for it (at least legally).
I’m perfectly fine with this outcome for a number of reasons:
- As opposed to Libertarians who believe that what you put into your body is your business and not the Government’s, as the Dad of an addict, shutting down a gateway, even if in part, is goodness.
- Once again, we see the “expert Government planners” fail. They expected BIG results from California tokers – a big #FAIL.
- Once again, we see the absolute overreach by politicians and bureaucrats in seeing their overreach, not for legalizing yet another intoxicant for the masses, in their greed for a perceived big new revenue stream (sorta like the locals have done with Motorcycle Week here in Central New Hampshire – they’ve been demanding more and more of a “cut” from the influx of dollars flowing into the
WeekendWeek (as it has grown to inhabit more of the calendar). - This is a “kill the Golden Goose” in a bit slower motion – their greed has solidified demand from “other than legal” sources. They just can’t help themselves.
- It shows that even a heavily desired “vice” product has a price inelasticity to it.
This also should be a warning to NH as the Democrats are all set to pass legislation to make recreational marijuana legal; they’ll ignore it. After all, while they put legalization of pot into their platform, it wasn’t due to any Principle pertaining to pot, it was a Means to an End – not growing pot but growing Government. And a robust (or so they think) new revenue stream will do exactly that. They finally realized that the road to such didn’t lead to a casino but to a “dispensary”.
Oh yeah, to our Libertarian friends (and our confused Conservatives as well) – there’s yet another side issue I’ll remind you of:
And trust me, this is as much of a goal as capturing a new revenue source is to them.
And to our pot smoking friends – remember, they DON’T care about your wants or your needs. They only see you as a new revenue source, nothing more, nothing less.
That is, until some Bright Bulb within their Party decides to do something with all that personal information you just gave to them. And trust me, they’ll make Facebook, Amazon, and Google look like pikers when they realize that they have the Force of Government to do something with it.
The Bigger the Government, the smaller the citizen
That’s their aim and they don’t care if your dreams go up in smoke.
(H/T: Instapundit)
