Taxes, Regulations, and Small Business in California ’s Marijuana Industry

David BoazCalifornians voted in 2016 to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use. The voter initiative,Proposition 64, provided for taxes, licensing, and a county option on whether to allow marijuana businesses at all (much like the alcohol rules in my home state of Kentucky, where some counties are “dry” to this day). Libertarians applauded the advance for liberty, and mostly understood that some taxes and regulation were inevitable — what product isn’t taxed and regulated in modern America? — butwarnedthat excessive taxes and regulations could keep much of the marijuana tradein the black market.Well, guess what? As usual, policymakers should have listened to the libertarians.Scott Wilson, theWashington Post’s California correspondent, hasa long lookat the state of the taxed and regulated marijuana market in California. It ’s a libertarian nightmare:The once ‐​mystical heart of the nation’s marijuana industry is dying, fast, strangled not by law enforcement but by the high taxes and baffling regulation that have crushed small farmerssince state voters approved legalization almost six years ago. …Following legalization, state officials made several far ‐​reaching decisions that have effectively driven many small cannabis farmers to the brink of insolvency while consolidating a $5 billion‐​a‐​year legal market in the hands of industrial‐​scale growers, most of them based far from these northern reaches [in] the Emerald ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs