fake-ideas

Eliot Spitzer Wants Half Your Weed

Hamilton Nolan · 02/17/08 12:50PM

New York governor Eliot Spitzer is getting pilloried left and right for his kind of stupid proposal to tax illegal drugs. He introduced it as a (serious? Nobody really knows) proposal to close the state's budget gap by laying taxes on coke, weed, and smack. In reality, many states use these drug taxes as a tool to seize assets from dealers under tax evasion charges [WP]. Right-wingers hate the idea because it appears to be soft on crime. Left-wingers hate the idea because it reveals the underlying hypocrisy on the war on drugs. But why should you, the average Philly-rolling person on the street, hate the idea? Because if it actually happened, those dime sacks would get a lot smaller.