Hi All. Here's the chopped down version of the argument we submitted on
Thursday. It clocks in at 192, but by my calculation, the word count
should drop to 186 the way the Department of Elections counts words. The
cost will be $572.00, and I will pay the difference (over 175
words---186-175=11 words extra @$2 = $22) myself to the LPSF since I don't
think I can cut out any more. I'm open to additional changes (edited so
extensively when we were down at the DOE on Thursday that they made us
handwrite the whole thing over), but at this point, I'm comfortable with it
as is.
Finally, recreational marijuana can be purchased openly and legally, but *Prop
D would send pot purchasers back to the black market with onerous taxes
that would make the price of legal cannabis prohibitively high.*
*Wasn’t the whole point of legalization to eliminate the black market where
even children could easily access marijuana, and quality and potency were
unpredictable? *
Washington and Colorado lowered their initially high taxes to attract
buyers back to the legal market, and even Berkeley lowered its cannabis tax
rate. *Cannabis is already taxed in California and San Francisco.* California
imposes a 15% excise tax. San Francisco taxes it at 8.5%, and cannabis
businesses with gross receipts of over $1,000,000 are already taxed from
..075% to .65%. Cannabis is already taxed at every step of the supply
chain—cultivation, testing, and sales.
*Prop D purposely leaves the door open to supervisors to further increase
taxes beyond what voters approve.* The *starting* rates are 1%, 1.5%,
2.5%, and 5%. Prop D sets 7% as the maximum; it’s just a matter of time
before tax hungry politicians vote to *raise* rates to 7%.
*Vote NO on D.*
Libertarian Party of San Francisco
Thanks!
Aubrey