Month: August 2017

Slides for talk in Denver August 30: Oglesby Revenue Cannabis Summit 3 post pub

 

The National Cannabis Summit has me speaking for an hour Wednesday, but its program, downloadable at https://www.nationalcannabissummit.org/program/, says I’m with the “Center for New Review.”  Googling that yielded nothing, so maybe this post will open up this website to anyone who’s curious.  (Welcome!  It’s Revenue.)

The National Library of Scotland has posted the enormous 1893-94 public domain Report of the British Indian Hemp Commission, and authorized anyone to repost it with attribution:  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.  (Thanks.)  Any student of marijuana policy will learn something there.  There is lots of confusing vocabulary, and I’ll post some notes at some point, but I’m still wading through it.  Any student of marijuana policy will learn something there (and volume 3 is much more useful and understandable for a tax man — I’ll post that someday, but the entire report is at http://digital.nls.uk/indiapapers/browse/archive/74908458).   Dale Gieringer of California NORML told me about this Report years ago, but I just found it online.

So, in 20-page (or so) chunks, here it comes, starting with volume 1:

Vol 1 Indian Hemp text 1-19 74464868_19_38

IHD Vol 1 pages 19-38 or so74464868_39_58 Continue reading “British Indian Hemp Commission — Posting Volume 1”

I get to talk for an hour on marijuana revenue at the National Cannabis Summit in Denver on August 30 at 9 a.m. The sponsors write me: “Speakers are evaluated on several criteria, including audience engagement, and the results are posted online after the conference as part of our speaker ‘Zagat’s’ guide.”

OK then. I’ll try to be provocative, and hope for pushback (engagement) with statements like these:

• Cannabis revenue design should be a public policy issue; government revenue should be an afterthought.
• The optimal rate of crime is greater than zero. That includes black market crime of untaxed marijuana sales.
• Taxing marijuana only by price is untenable in the long run, and the Tax Foundation is simply wrong.
• Government monopoly is the safest way to distribute cannabis.
• Marijuana advertising should remain non-tax-deductible.
• Taxing bud or flower by THC is not realistic.
• Medical marijuana should not be tax exempt.

My friend Keith Stroup, past head of the marijuana consumer lobby NORML and still working with NORML for legalization, would not put government sales at the top of list of options for distributing marijuana. Bureaucratic inefficiency looms. Nonetheless, Keith authorized me to quote him expressing non-opposition to experimentation with the government as seller: “It is in the best interest of consumers to experiment with as many models of legalization as we can come up with so we can evaluate and see which models work best.” Continue reading “Stroup on government cannabis sales”

The marijuana community is not monolithic. The interests of consumers and industry often diverge.

My friend Jared Moffat, finishing up a stint with the Marijuana Policy Project in Rhode Island, authorized me to post this statement he had emailed me: “It’s fair to say that the medical marijuana players in the RI industry are doing little to advance legalization, and some of them are certainly obstacles because they want it done in a way that protects them/their investments. They only want to move forward if they think that’s advantageous to them. Very frustrating.” Continue reading “Marijuana Consumers vs. Industry”