It took a little while for Missouri Rep. Shawn Rhoads’ colleagues to wrap their heads around the idea of taxing marijuana and other illegal drugs.
“A drug dealer is supposed to show up and buy a tax stamp for his drugs?” Bill Lant, a Republican from southwest Missouri, asked during a committee hearing on the bill.
Most of the hearing went pretty much like that.
“They needed a little time to let the idea sink in,” said Rhoads, a south-central Missouri Republican. “About 15 minutes after the meeting, I had someone grab me and say, ‘I get it now.’”
It must have sunk in. The bill won the committee’s approval Wednesday.
But while lawmakers ponder making Missouri the 21st state to collect taxes on illegal drugs, they’re also contemplating heading in the opposite direction and making Missouri the 24th to legalize marijuana in some fashion.
Two weeks earlier, that same House committee approved a medical marijuana bill on a 10-1 vote.
– Read the entire article at Kansas City Star.
