Month: May 2019

Here are slides from my panel presentation at the Ecole d’économie de Paris (Paris School of Economics) May 24 2019:  Paris 24 mai 2019 for the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy, http://www.issdp.org.

They include this song, to the tune of “Dear Abby” by John Prine:

Dear Public Officials who legalize weed:
Don’t miss out on revenue your people need.
A price-based percentage tax won’t be secure
‘Cause prices will tumble as markets mature.
The “liberty movement” wants taxes to fall.
But vanishing “price” taxes undermine y’all.

Price taxes vanish.

To the relief of the audience, I did not sing.

Federal illegality is not preventing the State of Louisiana from possessing and selling marijuana.  Maybe Berkeley and Oakland are too politically blue to get away with it, but that little municipal cannabis store in Washington State has been selling openly since March 2015.  Louisiana is about to start sales.

Here’s a long quote about how flagship Louisiana State University is “touching the plant,” from an official LSU website.

In 2015, the Louisiana Legislature passed the Alison Neustrom Act, which paved the way for the production, recommendation, and use of therapeutic cannabis.

The LSU AgCenter is operating its Therapeutic Cannabis Program under one of the two licenses in Louisiana. Continue reading “The State of Lousiana sells marijuana”

A friend in Vermont tells me the Legislature there insists on taxing cannabis solely by price.  Many people think Vermonters are so shrewd and some Southerners just might be a little slow, but price-only taxation is sillier than anything North Carolina has done since turning down 90 percent matching funds for Medicaid expansion.