States Relax Laws on Vices

• I Wear Pants

  There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about the states relaxing laws on vices because budget shortfalls and whatnot. It focused on Ohio.
  
  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575214382430311578.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLESecondNews
  
  I'm not sure if non-subscribers can see the whole thing or not so can the first person who looks at it tell me?
  
  Anyway, I think it only makes sense to start loosening up rules on some things that are based on morals because it just costs us money. Gambling was one of the things and I think another thing that could use more relaxed laws is marijuana.
  
  
  

  So Mr. Strickland convened a Saturday morning meeting last June with Ms. Sabety and other staffers at his Columbus home. "We put a big whiteboard up and were going through the budget piece by piece," Mr. Strickland recalls.
  
  A budget plan that lacked new revenue sources—like a tax increase or new gambling income—would have curbed assistance for Alzheimer's patients and mentally handicapped children, says Ms. Sabety. It also would have cut back a Medicaid program that provides oxygen tanks for chronically ill patients.
  
  "When they put up oxygen on the board, I said, 'Stop. We've gone as far as we're going to go," Mr. Strickland says. Six days later, he submitted a budget plan to Ohio legislators that included installing video lottery machines in the state's seven horse-racing tracks—a move that he estimated would raise $851 million over two years.
  
  Ohio's two United Methodist bishops—Mr. Strickland's superiors in the clergy—opposed the plan. It was politically risky, too, since Ohio voters had repeatedly rejected gambling.
  
  Mr. Strickland pressed ahead. The legislature approved his lottery-machine plan in July. It was blocked in September, when the Ohio Supreme Court said the law's language must be approved by voters.
  
  Meanwhile, in November, Ohioans voted to green-light a measure to build casinos in the state's four largest cities. Mr. Strickland had opposed the plan, saying the casinos represented "a very significant expansion of gambling activity."

  Voters and politicians in Ohio used to slap down attempts to expand gambling in their state. But last week, many cheered as demolition crews razed an old auto-parts plant in Columbus to make way for a new casino.
  
  Facing high unemployment and the aftermath of a $3.2 billion state-budget shortfall, Ohioans voted to allow casinos in November. Gov. Ted Strickland dropped his longtime opposition to video lottery machines, proposing to add them to racetracks to generate new tax revenue.
  Ohio Bets Gambling Will Aid Coffers
  
  View Slideshow
  [SB10001424052748703880304575236740028060192]
  Jim Korpi for The Wall Street Journal
  
  Artie Williams separated metals found in the cafeteria section of the Delphi Corp. automotive factory in Columbus, which is being demolished to make way for a new casino.
  Loosening the Reins
  
  See which states have made changes to restrictions on alcohol sales on Sunday, gambling or marijuana, or are planning to do so.
  States in the Red
  
  Most states have addressed or still face gaps in their budgets totaling $196 billion for fiscal year 2010, while tax revenue declined in the final quarter of 2009 in 39 of the states for which data is available.
  
  "If I had not been confronted with these difficult circumstances, I would have obviously opposed expanding gambling in Ohio," says Mr. Strickland.
  
  Nationwide, the public-funding crisis has led many state and local leaders to similarly reverse course. Hampered by withering funds for law enforcement, health care and other public services, a growing number of officials are condoning activities and businesses they'd be apt to restrict in better economic times.
  
  For fiscal 2011, 38 states project combined budget shortfalls of $89 billion, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan policy research group. Thirty-one states expect budget gaps totaling $73.5 billion in 2012. As a result, says Todd Haggerty, an analyst at the group, lawmakers are "trying anything and everything in order to bring their budgets into balance."
  
  Oakland, Calif., began taxing sales of medical marijuana last year. Now at least a half- dozen states are weighing measures to allow some legal pot sales. Others have loosened decades-long restrictions on Sunday alcohol sales. And about a dozen, like Ohio, have discussed or passed plans to ease restrictions on gambling.

• sjmvsfscs08

  The problem with marijuana, from the viewpoint of the tax-thirsty pigs in power, is that it will be difficult to tax if you just go ahead and legalize it. It's different from cigarettes or alcohol, in that you really can simply grow marijuana and it's good to go--no processing required. If there were a ridiculous tax on say, tomatoes, people would simply avoid purchasing them at the grocery store and grow their own in their yards, marijuana is very similar. That said, legalize that shit. It does much less harm than the fuckers at DARE would have you believe. While I've never smoked it in my life, my brother's roommate smokes it literally every day, no exaggeration, and he graduated college with a 3.9 and passed his nursing exam a year ahead of time. Not every marijuana user is a pothead; potheads are failures regardless of the vice.
  
  As for gambling, I'm good with that too on a smaller scale. I did though vote in favor of the casinos bill purely because we lose so much money to surrounding states. People that are willing to throw their cash away at casinos are willing to drive long distances to go do it anyway. I do however think the Toledo location is horrendous.
• I Wear Pants

  I like how the fact that someone put up the oxygen tanks on the whiteboard means that there is someone down in Columbus who would have been cool with cutting funding for oxygen tanks.
• Con_Alma

  I Wear Pants wrote: ...
  Anyway, I think it only makes sense to start loosening up rules on some things that are based on morals because it just costs us money. ...

  Whether it costs us money or not I do not think it's O.K. to loosen up rules on some things that are based on morals if they are reflective of the State's population and their desires.
• Websurfinbird

  

  sjmvsfscs08 wrote: If there were a ridiculous tax on say, tomatoes, people would simply avoid purchasing them at the grocery store and grow their own in their yards, marijuana is very similar.
  
  

  Although that comment was said in jest, I could see that happening. Produce has become both expensive and sometimes even dangerous (given all the E. Coli scares and what not). I would not be surprised if people start growing their own plants whether it be tomato, marijuana or otherwise.
• I Wear Pants

  Con_Alma wrote:

  I Wear Pants wrote: ...
  Anyway, I think it only makes sense to start loosening up rules on some things that are based on morals because it just costs us money. ...

  Whether it costs us money or not I do not think it's O.K. to loosen up rules on some things that are based on morals if they are reflective of the State's population and their desires.

  I meant the population.
  
  Being stressed for money puts things in perspective. We would still have prohibition of alcohol if it didn't cost so damned much to police it and if it were effective. Eventually people realized that they didn't care enough that people drank alcohol (despite the fact that they may have disagreed with drinking) to justify the cost spent on enforcing it when other things were suffering from lack of funding.
  
  I think we're about there now with a few things.
• I Wear Pants

  Websurfinbird wrote:

  sjmvsfscs08 wrote: If there were a ridiculous tax on say, tomatoes, people would simply avoid purchasing them at the grocery store and grow their own in their yards, marijuana is very similar.
  
  

  Although that comment was said in jest, I could see that happening. Produce has become both expensive and sometimes even dangerous (given all the E. Coli scares and what not). I would not be surprised if people start growing their own plants whether it be tomato, marijuana or otherwise.

  I think you underestimate how much people like not having to grow their food.
• Con_Alma

  I Wear Pants wrote: ...
  Being stressed for money puts things in perspective. ...
  
  I think we're about there now with a few things.
  

  Indeed it does put things in perspective. For me personally when things get tight I turn to the elementary, core convictions that we as a family subscribe to. Moral decisions that have costs are not the things we look to reduce.
  
  Ohio continues to have a conservative base and I don't think it's O.K. to relax laws on moral based issues unless the people as a whole agree to ...like they did with gambling.
• majorspark

  

  I Wear Pants wrote: I think you underestimate how much people like not having to grow their food.

  I think you underestimate how much people hate paying outrageous taxes.
• I Wear Pants

  majorspark wrote:

  I Wear Pants wrote: I think you underestimate how much people like not having to grow their food.

  I think you underestimate how much people hate paying outrageous taxes.

  I'll put money on the fact that if say, tomatoes were taxed a reasonable amount (as in not an insane percentage of their cost) that the consumption of them wouldn't go down too much and the decrease in sales wouldn't be due at all to people growing at home.
  
  Otherwise people would never eat out and they would grow most of their food because that is cheaper. But people like convenience and ease.
• majorspark

  

  I Wear Pants wrote:

  majorspark wrote:

  I Wear Pants wrote: I think you underestimate how much people like not having to grow their food.

  I think you underestimate how much people hate paying outrageous taxes.

  I'll put money on the fact that if say, tomatoes were taxed a reasonable amount (as in not an insane percentage of their cost) that the consumption of them wouldn't go down too much and the decrease in sales wouldn't be due at all to people growing at home.
  
  Otherwise people would never eat out and they would grow most of their food because that is cheaper. But people like convenience and ease.

  If you look the poster who brought it up put the analogy in the context ridiculous taxes. His point was that since mj could be easily produced by individuals, the kind of taxes politicians love to put on these types of things would be more easily thwarted.
• I Wear Pants

  Well yeah, but I think even in the marijuana situation there would be a lot of people who would buy it from a store/distributor. The effort to grow the stuff and do it right is a bit much even if it saves people a bit of money. And even if you're right about it not making much in tax revenue, who gives a shit. We still save billions of dollars by not having to prosecute people and hold them in jail and hunt down and destroy pot plants all over, etc, etc.
• j_crazy

  

  If I wanted to grow shit (weed included) I'd be a fucking farmer. I'll gladly buy someone else's sweat inducing crop and smoke to my heart's elight.
  
  much like wine and beer, I might consider a "home brew" from time to time. but just because I made 5 gallons of beer last month didn't stop me from buying my case of bud light.