As a Spaniard (where it is legal to grow and consume marijuana within the limits of your property, as long as it is for personal use) living in Southern California, I agree that marijuana should not be legalized only because it’s taxable. On the other hand, if that is the argument which has to be made in order to persuade enough voters to legalize it, then I am all for it.

Not as relevant to the marijuana issue, but more to do about California and taxes, it seems that more democrats are willing to raise taxes in order to ease the fiscal pressure on the state. For example, I received a lot of heat for voting against (dual citizenship) legislation which would have increases taxes to pay for a high-speed railroad down the coast of California, and for the provision of more police and fire equipment. Despite the recent upsurge of “paleo-conservative” candidates, I think that this is a mentality shared by a number of republicans, as well. Nobody seems to think that instead of raising taxes, the state should instead decrease spending.

That is my only preoccupation with this entire marijuana ordeal. I will be glad if it’s legalized, but at the same time I’m afraid that it will just give justification to Sacramento to continue our current trend of high expenditure. California is approaching a crisis of interventionism, as Ludwig von Mises called it, and at this point there is little that taxation can do about it. That said, that is probably the biggest difference between our present crisis and that of the Great Depression; it follows that the consequences of ours will be much worse.