Liberal NY pols have yet another faaabulous idea: let's award state licenses to sell pot--so we can tax it!

Whenever politicians and bureaucrats discover anything lots of people want to do--indeed, are determined to do--they start making plans to tax the hell out of it.

So consider the brilliant pols of New York who proposed to legalize weed.  Part of the argument was that it would reduce the monopoly of the drug cartels, but the main reason was so they could cash in on the total determination of smokers, by taxing it.  Seemed like a great idea, right?  They could see people were determined to use it, so they thought that by legalizing it they could reap billions, eh?  

What could possibly go wrong with that brilliant plan?

Ah, glad you asked.  So let's review the brief and corrupt history of New York's plan to legalize pot. 

First thing the pols realized was that to keep profits high, they could only "award" less than 100 lucrative, licenses.  And they'd have to be...um..."carefully" awarded.  So in the interest of "fairness" the brilliant pols decide to award licenses to blacks and other minorities first--especially if the already had convictions for selling illegal drugs, cuz the pols knew that was "business experience."

I swear I'm not making this up.

And of course the "industry" would have to be rigorously controlled, with lots of forms to fill out each month, lots of permits, licenses and so on.  Inventory forms.  And this brought the first realization: the pols would have to create a state agency to walk the new license-holders through how to fill out all the applications and forms they required.  To do that they appropriated something like $150 million.

Now came the second realization: With all the taxes and state-mandated overhead, pot sold by the state-licensed "dispensaries" (love the orwellian name, eh?) would likely end up costing customers twice as much as  the same stuff sold by the same unlicensed dealers who'd been selling illegally for decades.  This would likely mean the eagerly-touted "hundreds of millions a year" in tax revenue would be substantially less than predicted.

But on the plus side, the scheme provided more Democrat-awarded jobs in state government.  So even if the state doesn't get any net income from the scheme, it was a resounding success, eh?