(Jacksonville.com) TALLAHASSEE — It might not solve the state’s budget crisis, but a bipartisan pair of lawmakers think they’ve found another item that should be taxed: the bong.
Sen. Steve Wise, R-Jacksonville, and Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, have both filed legislation that would subject a range of pipes often used to smoke crack or marijuana to a 25 percent tax.
“What we hope to do is get rid of the charade, the hypocrisy,” Rouson said.
It’s something of a personal crusade for Rouson, who can still recite from memory the date he finally broke his own substance-abuse problems. The lawmaker said he’s been clean for more than 11 years after struggling with crack, alcohol and marijuana.
Wow, he still has enough memory to remember a single date in his own personal history. What a feat. I can still remember my first ever junior high locker combination (9-18-36). Whoo-hoo.
Wise said, the aim is to increase the cost of peddling the pipes.“We’re trying to get to the wholesalers and jack up the price big-time,” Wise said.
So let’s see, these two geniuses, Senator Ironic Surname and Representative Memory Master, are going to combat the head shop industry by taxing pipes and bongs that remain legal because the pipe or bong itself isn’t illegal until someone smokes pot out of it. The problem, you see, is that they can’t just shut down the “charade” because technically, you could smoke tobacco out of those pipes and bongs.
OK, besides the two obvious questions, “Why not just tax the pot they put in the bongs?” and “Won’t people just make apple / potato / honey bear bongs?”, I’m seeing a third question that’s a bit more subtle: how do you define a tax on certain legal items you don’t like because people do illegal things with them without also taxing the similar legal items people don’t do illegal things with?
In other words, how do you tax a pot pipe without taxing the tobacco pipe? I suppose you define its composition (e.g. made of glass) and construction (e.g. has a carb) and tax only those, but if you do that, aren’t you just making a stronger case for the legality of pipes and bongs that will be made to beat the tax? Here’s a plastic bong with a cork in the carb… is that subject to the 25% tax now? If not, is it now defined as a tobacco pipe under Florida law? What about this stainless steel pipe with screwed-on disposable bowl, carb, and mouthpiece covers and a carabiner for your keys? Is it a pot pipe or a decorative keychain? What’s the tax on keychains?
Besides, they specifically allow an exemption for hookahs, because of the Middle Eastern cultural aspects. So let me get this straight: a foreign culture has centuries of history smoking flavored tobaccos from a multi-user bong, that’s OK, but our domestic culture has decades of history smoking cannabis from a single-user bong and that’s not OK. And of course, nobody would consider buying a not-taxed-25% hookah and smoking cannabis out of that, would they?
If you could write statutes that distinguish the difference between a pot pipe and a tobacco pipe in order to tax them separately, wouldn’t you be able to write statutes to just make the pot pipes illegal?
Topics: bong tax, Democrat, FL Rep. Darryl Rouson, FL Sen. Steve Wise, Florida, paraphernalia, Politicians on Pot, Republican
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It’s not even legal for head shop owners to refer to their wares as “bongs”.
I’m no lawyer, so maybe some of you legal beagles can help me out here… It seems to me this is a good thing!… If they tax paraphernalia specifically used to smoke marijuana and allow it to be sold legally, aren’t they de facto legalizing marijuana being smoked in those pipes? In other words, how are they going to prosecute a person with marijuana or resin in a pipe that was sanctioned by the state to be sold for the purpose of smoking marijuana?
I love my hookahs!
I don’t know why FL is such an ass-backwards state. I lived there for a few years and there are so many amazing accepting people down there.
The wrong people are representing FL. There also has to be some underlying problem with the state that has allowed this to happen.
This could be a good thing? Usually a tax on an item means there is protection on that item. I would gladly give up a few extra bucks to assure me the legal right to buy it. If any loopholes in owning a bong (especially with ganja in it) could be closed, this could be good.
Im not a genius at tax law or any of the sort, but “Taxation without representation?!”
this is happening too much in this America.
All of this is because of the stupidity of Gonzales v. Raich, the wrongly decided Supreme Court case that said that states couldn’t make their own marijuana laws.
Any proper reading of the 9th and 10th amendment says that individuals have unenumerated rights and states have jurisdiction over police powers.
The bizarre grouping of liberal statists and conservative morons has imprisoned us on this. Otherwise we’d have at least a couple of states with full legalization. Thank you to Justices Thomas, O’Connor, and Rehnquist. A hearty “fuck you” to all the rest…
mr. reuben,
They’re all multiples of 9.
Russ I’m amazed you still remember that combination.
Well this is simply Push back for the gains qwe have made in the last month. They are scared and pulling this type of crap out of their behinds because its al lthey have left.
This could backfire on them too, if it would even happen. So, we all go out and buy bongs in FL, then when the tax money comes in we say “if you get that much tax money from bongs, that people buy once a year or more, how much more money could you generate if you taxed weed, that people buy daily, weekly or monthly?”
How do they think this helps anyhow, they are missing the point, if the state “says” these are illegal drug bongs/pipes and that they Ok to sell, and the state makes money from the 25% tax on the sales of these bongs, right?
So they are saying ok to use them?
Seems to me if they are ok with knowing the bongs are for marijuana or whatever drug and that people are legally buying them to use that drug of choice in them, then we shouldnt be arrested for using a state regulated drug use bong that we paid the state taxes for, yet they knew why we bought it and were ok with it!
What a mess!
They’ve already taxed the shit outta blunts in GA. I think the tax was raised 18%. This is for prerolled and unrolled blunts.
Even if bongs were illegal, it still wouldn’t curb the demand. They are doing this to stop the crack and marijuana smokers, but what about all the bong tobacco smokers. Don’t we have to put on the charade at head shops that they are for tobacco use only? so punish all the tobacco bong smokers. What a cock bag.