Pubdate: Sun, 14 Feb 2016
Source: Press Democrat, The (Santa Rosa, CA)
Copyright: 2016 The Press Democrat
Contact:  http://www.pressdemocrat.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/348
Author: Jim Sweeney

SOME TAXING QUESTIONS ABOUT 'MEDICINE'

I take five medications daily to treat chronic rhinitis. Four of them 
require prescriptions, so the state doesn't levy sales taxes on them. 
A tax might be a disincentive to follow a doctor's advice, especially 
for someone with limited income.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration changed my fifth daily med to 
over-the-counter status a year or so ago. My physician still wants to 
me to use it, but now I'm on the hook for state and local sales 
taxes. In Santa Rosa, that's 8.75 percent.

But today's topic isn't my stuffy nose. It's pot.

Or to use the euphemism preferred by users and purveyors, medicine. 
You say Pineapple Express, I say Singulair. You say Nebula Kush, I 
say Prednisolone. I'm guessing the Thin Mint Cookies listed on the 
"menu" at Peace in Medicine, a local dispensary that claims to 
service 40,000 "patients," aren't the same ones the Girl Scouts are 
selling outside my neighborhood Safeway store, but I digress.

The point is the rules are the same for either kind of medicine. You 
can't buy it without permission from a physician.

Tax treatment is another matter.

It's a good thing I can't smell much of anything, because there's 
something skunky about the politics of pot taxes.

The state says medicine - that would be the Nebula Kush, Pineapple 
Express variety - is subject to sales taxes, even though it must be 
recommended by a doctor.

To qualify for a tax exemption, the state Board of Equalization says, 
a drug must be prescribed by a doctor and dispensed by a registered 
pharmacist. A recommendation isn't a prescription, according to the 
board (which is probably a good thing, because the feds just might 
nick a doc's license for prescribing pot). And marijuana dispensaries 
aren't pharmacies (despite the scientific sounding names of their 
products - Gorilla Glue No. 4, anyone?).

So pot gets taxed, Singulair doesn't. Tampons won't be either if 
California legislators determine they're a necessity. But a bill 
introduced in Sacramento this past week would add a 15 percent retail 
tax on top of the 8.75 percent sales tax on Platinum Romulan, almost 
triple the tax rate for my over-the-counter Nasocort.

Talk about a buzz kill. You would think that users - pardon me, 
patients - and dispensary owners - make that caregivers - would 
object to such an obvious double standard, right? These are sick 
people we're talking about, after all. Their doctors say that Afgoo 
or Hash Train will make them well, or at least ease their suffering. 
The tax on cigarettes - coffin nails! - is only 87 cents a pack. And 
everyone knows that pot is harmless and therapeutic - a placebo and a 
miracle drug all rolled up in one.

Yet you could hunt for a long time without finding pot merchants who 
object to taxing their customers. Oh, some of them may quibble about 
the rate, but you're mostly going to hear about the potential tax 
windfall from enabling the sale of marijuana cigarettes and tinctures 
and brownies and chocolate bars and truffles - even the gluten-free 
and vegan varieties.

I covered the state Legislature for a lot of years, and I don't 
remember many businesses pleading for higher taxes. I've read plenty 
of news stories about companies moving their headquarters overseas to 
trim their budding federal tax bills. I gripe about my taxes. You 
probably gripe about yours, too.

Maybe marijuana moguls are different. Maybe they like paying taxes.

Or maybe they didn't medicate before their U.S. history class and 
doze off. You see, from the Revolution until Prohibition, the federal 
government was heavily dependent on alcohol taxes to pay for its 
operations. And without the 16th Amendment (income taxes), the 18th 
(Prohibition) didn't stand a chance.

You don't suppose they're trying to hook the state on a new source of 
revenue - one that could discourage opposition to full-scale 
legalization of marijuana? But if it's just another intoxicant, was 
pot ever really medicine at all?
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom