# Create your own drug policy

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-your-own-drug-policy/500916>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [June 25, 2009, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-your-own-drug-policy/500916 "2009-06-25T08:19:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2009, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/create-your-own-drug-policy/500916/61 "2009-07-07T15:53:05Z")

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> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#):
>
> Some states tax baby food, why the heck wouldn’t we tax a leisure/recreational drug like pot.

If you’re talking about a sales tax equivalent to any other OTC food or drug, I have no problem with that. Taxes ought to be linked to cost. In order to have trade, we require a working legal system and transportation networks, therefore we need sales tax (or some other form of tax). I have no problem with that.

However, if you believe we should tax things just because they’re pleasurable, then that’s defective thinking.

> [@](#):
>
> What makes pot any less taxable than liquor?

Alcohol is severely harmful to society. It actually kills people just from consuming it, and causes chronic severe disease. It puts heavy load on the criminal justice system because it makes people act violently and destructively. It has a very heavy, quantifiable cost to society that pot does not have.

> [@](#):
>
> There are all sorts of ways pot hrams society. Pot is frequently smoke unfiltered which is just as bad for you as smoking an unfiltered cigarette. It affects memory which affects the economy (there was a taco stand in Venice beach where they had to change the prices because noone working there could figure out how to make change after about 10 in the morning).

Even if any of this were true (most of it is not), the costs are almost insignificant.

> [@](#):
>
> I am also pretty sure that there is no tax rate on the table that would actually increase the retail cost of pot to the consumer. You get rid of a LOT of middlemen when Con Agra and Altria grow, process and distribute pot to your local liquor store.

That’s not the point. The point isn’t that we should tax consumers more just because we can. The point is that anything that is harmless and free should be taxed no greater than anything else that is harmless and free just because some people have a moral disagreement with it.

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