The Proposed Law: - The Oregon Cannabis Tax Act 2014

Whereas the people of the State of Oregon find that cannabis does not cause the social ills that its prohibition was intended to guard against; rather, that most of the social ills attributed to cannabis result from its unreasonable prohibition which:

(a) Provides incentives to traffic in marijuana instead of limiting its prevalence, since almost all cannabis users evade the prohibition, even though drastically expanding public safety budgets have reduced funding for other vital services such as education;

(b) Fosters a black market that exploits children, provides an economic subsidy for gangs, and sells cannabis of questionable purity and uncertain potency;

(c) Generates enormous, untaxed, illicit profits that debase our economy and corrupt our justice system; and,

(d) Wastes police resources, clogs our courts, and drains the public budget to no good effect; and,

Whereas, the people recall that alcohol prohibition had caused many of the same social ills before being replaced by regulatory laws which, ever since, have granted alcohol users the privilege of buying alcohol from state licensees, imposed strict penalties protecting children, delivered alcohol of sure potency, and generated substantial public revenues; and,

Whereas the people hold that cannabis prohibition is a sumptuary law of a nature repugnant to our constitution’s framers and which is so unreasonable as to:

(a) Arbitrarily violate the rights of cannabis users to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure as guaranteed to them by Article 1, Section 9 of the Oregon Constitution;

(b) Unreasonably impose felony burdens on the cannabis users while the state grants special privileges to alcohol users, which violates Article 1, Section 20 of the Oregon Constitution;