From today's New York Times editorial, the latest in a series calling for the legalization of marijuana:
One important way to curb use is to tax marijuana heavily, following the post-Prohibition template of replacing criminalization with regulation and taxes....tax the drug based on its potency — which can be measured in various ways, including by the amount of the component THC in a batch — and increase the rate over time to keep up with inflation.
No wonder the Times favors marijuana legalization. It creates the opportunity to raise taxes, an opportunity that for the Times editorial writers trumps any other policy objective. To the sixteen other tax increases previously supported by the Times editorial column (one of the services we provide here is keeping track of them), now add a seventeenth: an inflation-indexed tax on marijuana potency.