Notes
On New York’s disastrous recreational marijuana legislation implementations:
[T]he equity program is itself an act of hubris, distorting the market by prioritizing progressive goals instead of awarding licenses to anyone with the wherewithal to run a successful marijuana business.
The THC tax is one of those ideas that appeal to progressive technocrats who give little thought to unintended consequences. The rationale was that it would help maintain revenue in the face of falling retail prices while deterring overconsumption by forcing consumers to pay more for products of higher potency. Legislators somehow did not take into account the existence of a black market in which the tax rate is zero. Given that reality, there is an unavoidable tradeoff between using taxes to raise revenue or paternalistically prod consumers and getting those consumers to patronize the businesses that actually collect the taxes.
The facts that over-regulation; arbitrary rules and enforcements; racial, sexual, legal and other discrimination; and the “number one advocate for equity” possibly using his position to seek retribution and illegally harm business owners are all on display here just provide a kind of bestiary of simple reasons why government mucks everything up and wastes such absurd sums of money, with almost no utility provided.
