The Oregon Cannabis Tax Act of 2010 was launched Monday by marijuana legalization advocates, reported the Salem-News.
A signature campaign to support the initiative is being spearheaded by the Oregonians for Cannabis Reform 2010, who say that the proposed lawwould earn the state as much as $300 million a year and could help stabilize Oregon’s troubled economy.
Supporters say that part of marijuana sales proceeds would fund drug abuse education and treatment programs and would take marijuana off of the black market.
The act “would comprehensively reform marijuana laws by regulating and taxing adult sales; licensing the cultivation of the drug for sale in state-run package stores and adults-only businesses; allowing adults to grow their own and farmers to grow industrial hemp without license; and letting doctors prescribed untaxed cannabis to patients suffering from a variety of illnesses and injuries,” says the Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp.
But resident Shelby Ulrich told KPTV in Portland that the act could be harmful to society. “Society is already going away from, you know, doing what’s right and laws. Why make one more thing OK when it’s hurting others?”
But Kevin Mannix, a local politician who abandoned an effort against medical marijuana in the state earlier in the year, predicts that the proposed law will not be implemented. “There is a slim-to-none chance this [proposal] would be upheld in federal court,” Mannix says.
Oregon is one of 11 states that allow medical use of marijuana.