The Boston THC Party
Nowadays, the protest would be PAYING the tax.
251 years ago today, colonists dressed as natives (like the Tea Party itself, the tradition of whites using racial minorities as cover for their lawbreaking would also be reenacted for centuries--to the Charles Stewart case, and beyond) and tossed British tea into Boston Harbor in protest of increased tea taxes.
Like today’s ruling class, the royals understood the marriage between drugs and taxes--people like drugs so much, they will pay extra to get them. But like the Clinton Administration did, they found that when you levy too much tax upon drugs, users will find work-arounds after they protest.
Dunkin, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi: These are the American caffeine cartels. Not a tea company among them. After we went so far as to have a war, the Brits decided they did not want to trade with the Yanks anymore, and since the British monopolized the global tea trade, Americans sought alternative sources for caffeine.
Today, we don't tax caffeine. The first attempt at federal marijuana control also happened through taxation, at $100 per ounce, in 1937. It was intended to be a prohibitive tax, and it was. Since we established a regulated retail cannabis market in Massachusetts in 2018 we have levied a combined 20% excise, local, and state sales tax on products containing delta-9 THC.
But it is illegal for anything other than a licensed entity to pay cannabis taxes in Massachusetts. While individual colonists were expected to directly pay the Governor taxes for their tea, today individual citizens would become criminals for attempting to directly pay the Governor for their THC.
They *say* it is to ensure that all THC taxes are properly paid, but criminalizing those who attempt to pay them means this is prohibition of a different flavor.
If I grow 10,000 roses and sell them for $1 each, the Commonwealth wants sales tax in the amount of $675. If I grow 10,000 grams of cannabis flower and sell them for $1 each, the Commonwealth is due $2000, but doesn't want me to pay it.
If a tax exists for the sake of people NOT being able to pay it, it is a prohibitory tax--just like the Marihuana Tax Act was intended.
This 251st anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, we should be tossing cash into Boston Harbor to represent all the Commonwealth is throwing away in its continued prohibition of marijuana.