From: damico@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (bill d'Amico)
Subject: Another Bloomington HT editorial
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 15:58:18 GMT

Well the Herald Times has managed to run another partial condemnation of
the WoD.

Quoted without permission.

A travesty of justice is being inflicted in Indiana in the name of the
war on drugs.

Under a new state law that took effect July 1, anyone in posession of
illegal drugs, including marijuana, must go to the Indiana Department of
Revenue anonymously and pay an excise tax on it.

On the surface, this sounds as stupid as the state firworks law, which
requires anyone buying fireworks in-state to use them only out of state.
Who expects anyone with illegal drugs to declare them to the state and
pay an excise tax on it?

But that is the whole point of this law. The assumption is that people
with illegal drugs _won't_ pay the tax. And that is just what the state
wants.

Why? Because if people with illegal drugs don't pay the tax and are
arrested possessing, producing or dealing them, they are legally liable
to a warrent by the Department of Revenue for the tax and a 100 percent
penalty, plus daily interest.

Now it sounds like a brutally effective way to sting drug dealers,
right?

Right. And in cases of big-time dealers of hard drugs it ought to be
used. But not in marijuana cases.

Let it be said that we in no way support marijuana dealing or use. But
when it comes to prosecution there is such a thing as proportionality.
The punishment should fit the crime, not become a crime itself. But thus
it is with this law.

Consider:

  The drug must be redeclared and the tax repaid _every_two_days_. In
other words, the law is set up to encourage avoidance and entrap people.

  The tax for marijuana is identical to the tax for far more dangerous
substances, like crack cocaine or even heroin. This is absurd,
especiallysince crack cocain and heroin are sold in far smaller weights
than marijuana. Thus the tax on marijuana is greater even though it is far
less harmful.

  The tax is enormous: $40 per gram. There are 28.3 grams in an ounce,
453 in a pound. So the tax on a pound of marijuana would be $18,120. And
with the 100 percent penalty for nonpayment, that is $36,260.

Consider: police say a top-grade marijuna plant might have a street
value of $1,000. Say a plant weigh four pounds. Thus the tax would total
$145,040. What other product in the world has a market value of $1,000
carries an excise tax of $145,000?

Ah, but you say nobody is going to apply that law to some person with
one plant - only in cases lke the one we reported on last week where a
Monroe County couple was arrested for allegedly cultivating more than
300 marijuana plants and processing them inside their home, right?

Wrong. Recently a 50-year-old Greene County man with a single huge
marijuana plant staked out in his tomato patch was arrested and state
tax proceedings were initiated against him. Police said the plant, a
sequoia among pot plants, weighted 12 pounds. The man's taxand penalty:
$434,880.

And what will happen if he can't pay? Under the law the state can put a
lien on his home and his vehicle, can seize his savings and other liquid
assets, and garnish his wages. And this for a single marijuana plant.

That is justice?

What happens when a neighbor who doesn't like you plants some pot on a
corner of your property, waits for it to grow and then calls police?

Or take the Monroe County couple. They owe more than _$7.5_million. Even
if they were making tens of thousands from illegal marijuana sales, they
stand to lose everything they have, and for the rest of their lives
because the law overrides bankruptcy.

What's more, under state drug laws their real estate  and home are subject 
to automatic forfeiture because they were alledgedly involved in drug
production. They bear the legal burden of fighting to recover it.

Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Never was it more truly said that the power to tax is the power to
destroy. This law is an abomination. It inflicts immeasurably greater
evil than it addresses. It must be repealed.

- end quoted material -

Apparently some attitudes have been changing here in Bloomington. I
doubt that the HT would have written this editorial in previous years.
Of course they do have an easy target: this law is indeed an
abomination. And they still haven't realized that there is no rational
reason for marijuana prohibition to continue. We've got to keep
hammering on that point - eventually the truth will win out, and it'll
be legal.

--
bill d'Amico                  | You've got to have a Cause to make
damico@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu | an Effect.  -- Dill Danno
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