Grass is greener when it's filling the coffersBefore he was Governor of America's most populous and wealthy state, before he was the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a refreshingly candid, self-promoting bodybuilder, with a will of iron and a taste for hedonism.
Thus, when he suggested this week that it was time for Californians to have "an open debate" on "whether to legalise and tax marijuana for recreational use," it was hard not to think of a more youthful governor, taking a big hit on a joint in the 1977 bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron.
He later told GQ: "That is not a drug. It's a leaf."
The Governor wants to put everything on the table. Polls suggest Americans are interested in having this conversation. An ABC News Washington Post poll in April said 46 per cent favoured legalising small amounts of marijuana, more than double the number in favour 12 years ago.
A Zogby Poll in May said 52 per cent supported legalising marijuana as a taxed, regulated substance. And a Field Poll in April said 56 per cent of registered voters in California also favoured legalisation.
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But the word that jumps out from Schwarzenegger's comment - and one that may be reshaping the decades-old debate on the pros and cons of a drug still categorised by federal statutes as a Schedule 1 substance - is tax. Could it be that after endless talk about the drug's health, social and public safety impacts, the question of whether or not to legitimise marijuana will come down to the pragmatic question: how much money can we make?
This is not a happy time in California. The state is broke, US$60 billion ($101 billion) in the hole and counting. Yet partisan politics make the prospect of raising money via taxes close to zero.
When the going gets tough, the tough get creative. In March, Nevada considered whether to tax prostitutes, but baulked 3-4 at a US$5 tax on sex acts. California is now pondering whether the illicit leaf might green empty state coffers.
The drug is routinely described in media reports as California's biggest cash crop, a claim the Los Angeles Times queried in April with the headline: "Is pot the biggest cash crop? Only if you're on drugs."
And with good reason: no one knows for sure how much the state's illicit marijuana market is worth. The usual guesstimate is US$14 billion. The national figure is cited as US$100 billion. Given marijuana is illegal it is reasonable to assume sellers inflate the price.
The US$14 billion figure comes from Jon Gettman, the former president of the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Oddly, it is based on a tonnage estimate from the Bush White House of 10,000 metric tonnes, about triple the figure routinely used by federal authorities.
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