Thu Feb 09 2012
Maybe you can't blame the North American Free Trade Agreement for stimulating illegal drug traffic between Mexico and the United States, but that's another story. The topic at hand is the significance of last week's big marijuana bust in Franklin County, said to be Kentucky's largest seizure in transit in almost a year. The pot, valued at nearly $2 million, arrived on a ship from Mexico before it was tracked from South Carolina to an oil-change business in Lawrenceburg. The business owner was arrested at his Franklin County home on drug trafficking charges.
On the official level, comments were generally supportive, with local law-enforcement authorities predicting a significant reduction in drug dealing as a result of the arrest. Unofficially, reaction was somewhat less sanguine, as reflected by public postings to The State Journal Web site, an inveterate local outlet for cynicism and negativity. There, the drug bust revived the old debate over legalizing marijuana.
"Why create a black market that brings with it the inherent dangers of a black market?" one reader asked. "Make it safe, make it legal."
"But it is illegal, and for good reason, it is toxic," another shot back. "Stoners don't make good students, parents, teachers, employees or citizens."
"Alcoholics don't make good citizens and alcohol is exceedingly more toxic than marijuana, but it is legal," yet another retorted.
And on it goes. It's going nowhere really, as legalizing marijuana would require action higher than the local or even state level, federal drug laws being involved. But just imagine the possibilities, with allowances for absurdity:
The state legislature, still trying to come to grips with the question of whether casino gambling should be permitted in Kentucky, could go for broke with a package of two constitutional amendments, one for casinos and the other for marijuana. Legislators just now sidling up to the idea of raising the cigarette tax with an overdose of diffidence could dispose of that option as being insufficiently bold. While the $1-a-pack tobacco tax now supported by Gov. Steve Beshear is too rich for some, that rate would surely be greeted as a bargain by potheads who pay much more for their chosen mind-bender, not to mention risking jail time. And by the way, letting all those marijuana users and dealers out of the slammer might also provide some relief from the state's budgetary deficit.
Of course, the marijuana prices inflated by illegality would likely plunge in the wake of decriminalization, so expect the legislature at some point to end up raising the marijuana tax as well as the cigarette tax. Then there'd have to be some sort of tax on the anti-social types growing their own in the backyard, no longer confined to the backwoods to escape those snoopy National Guard helicopters.
Local governments like Frankfort, which made indoor smoking illegal in buildings open to the public a couple of years ago, would have to decide if dope poses the same health threat as tobacco. The county school system, currently mulling over the possibility of a prohibition against smoking on its outdoor properties as well as indoors, might also have to consider where reefers fit in.
Naturally, there are going to be some detractors, as in any progressive movement. They'll probably whine when the pot smokers, zonked out on cheap grass, stay off work to watch "Easy Rider" encores or turn on anew to Grateful Dead classics. Maybe those beneficiaries of legalization will even join the compulsive gamblers at the newly legalized casinos. But that's all right, Kentucky can get the jump on Hoosier gambling palaces by offering travel packages directed at marijuana tourists who'll add cannabis fields and processing plants to the obligatory distillery tours.
Yes, there'll be criticism, but our state leaders will have to ignore the cheap shots from pundits who don't understand the intricate workings of cutting-edge fiscal policy. Just keep intoning the mantra, what if ...
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