I just returned from sunny California where the state’s in a bit of a budget crisis. I spent most of my time drinking fresher boba and eating yakitori with more obscure body parts than you can find on the East Coast. But I took a few seconds from consuming here and there to talk politics (although it was mostly about the mayor’s affair with a reporter, his bodyguard manhandling a reporter, or a number of other politicians’ political pratfalls). Among the proposals floating around to close the budget deficit – mostly cutting funding for a cocktail of social services – none seemed as outside-the-boxy as one I heard today after I returned to D.C.

A group of marijuana growers and dealers is offering to pay the state one billion dollars to solve the budget crisis. The coalition, which calls itself Let Us Pay Taxes, claims regulation and taxation of marijuana could produce six billion dollars in additional tax revenue for the state. Clifford Schaffer, a spokesman for the group, noted that figure “is a conservative estimate. By other estimates, the revenues could be five times that. The economists are with us all the way on this one. Marijuana prohibition is an economic disaster.”

I’m really not sure how the group’s press release landed in my inbox, but I’m glad the potheads consider me an ally. Here are some excerpts:

“Let’s face reality,” Schaffer says. “Marijuana legalization is inevitable. The situation is already beyond control in California. The state and local authorities have offered safe harbor for medical marijuana use and the Federal Government simply doesn’t have the resources for effective control.”

…

Schaffer went on to say that the national market for marijuana has been estimated from a low of ten billion dollars per year to more than fifty billion dollars per year. “The first states to regulate and tax marijuana will receive an economic bonanza bigger than the original California Gold Rush,” says Schaffer. “Some states will get rich like the Saudis.” Schaffer predicts that it will not take long for some local areas to wake up to the economic possibilities. “We are talking potentially big bucks here,” he said. “The Canadians are already starting to take note of a cannabis-fueled economic boom in some areas. Politicians can’t resist fresh cash, especially when it is coming to their local community. There will be big winners and losers here. The winners will be the ones who recognize the foregone conclusion first.”

This proposal comes at a tough time for the Drug Czar. The One Hitters, the D.C. softball team sponsored by Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, took over first place in the Congressional Softball League last week. Not only are the stoners smoking the competition, they’re talking mad shit to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s softball team which has refused to play them “for ideological reasons.”

“Everyone knows that ONDCP backed out because they were scared of losing to us on the field, much the same way they are afraid to debate us because their policies fail in the court of public opinion,” said center fielder David Guard. “We have an open challenge to the Drug Czar to play or debate anytime, anywhere.”

Tell 'em Porter: