Tenn. Drug Dealers Must Buy Tax Stamps
It's the tax man...coming after Tennessee drug dealers. Beginning January 1, dealers of illegal controlled substances will have to buy tax stamps. Tennessee becomes the 22nd state to enact such a law. The tax isn't cheap to create or enforce:
Drug peddlers will be required to pay state excise taxes on illegal substances — from marijuana to moonshine, from cocaine to the often illegally obtained prescription painkiller OxyContin — under a new law that goes into effect Saturday.
A 10-person tax agency has been created at a one-time cost of $1.2 million to assess the taxes and collect them. The annual cost to enforce the drug tax will be $800,000...
What a stupid idea.
''It's patently ridiculous. Legal nitwittery,'' said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a Washington nonprofit that calls itself the largest, oldest group devoted to legalizing marijuana for responsible adult use. ''On the one hand, it says you can't own a substance. And on the other hand, it creates a taxing scheme … The law on its face makes no sense.''
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