Welles: Legalized marijuana would hurt Alaska

  • By Stan Welles
  • Wednesday, October 1, 2014 8:23pm
  • Opinion

How do you destroy a State in one easy lesson? Vote in marijuana!

Drugs are definitely not family friendly are they?

Have you ever had an employee on drugs? Just like the $600 Wagon Wheel theft the other day in Homer, the Homer police found one of our first employees of our Pizza restaurant at home with our cash drawer and drugs on the table.

Our last trip to Colorado in April was the most depressing trip we have ever had to Colorado. Drugs are now placed in food. One kid knowingly ate a laced cookie, went nuts and jumped out a window to his death. A fourth grader stole his Mother’s ‘medical marijuana’, took it to school and sold it!

My wife’s sister and husband live in Nederland. They say that 80% of Nederland is on drugs. The smell is nearly always in the air.

My wife is from Colorado. I went to college there. Over some 20 years, we have lived and/or worked in Englewood, Cascade, Colorado Springs, Boulder and Broomfield as well as on a ranch at 9,000 ft above sea level with an address of Tenth and Plumb: Ten miles south of Parshall, Colorado Plumb at the end of the road! Deer and elk were plentiful. The first elk I shot from my porch using the tractor to put it in the barn! We loved Colorado. Had the international steel market not gone flat in the early 1980’s taking the molybdenum demand down with it; we would probably still be there.

While the politicians are jumping for joy over the tax revenues — though they have not been as high as anticipated — they don’t see the phase lag of the tax burden freight train coming at them due to the:

— destroyed lives of the kids

— destruction of the families

— inability of employers to find drug free employees

Just like Washington State where Boeing has moved a lot of its production out of the State and moved its headquarters, Colorado employers will be bailing out also.

Phase lag taxation is one of the stealth tax forms commonly over looked. Phase lag taxation is that form of stealthy taxation that strikes after a foolish, emotion-appealing policy has been implemented. A suburb example was Saturday, September 13th Alaska Dispatch News’ Commentary “Break up Alaska’s economic monopoly by legalizing and taxing marijuana.”

In Colorado an attorney friend tells me non-violent crime is accelerating. Here in Alaska drug abuse is already epidemic even without legalization! Take the September 26-27 edition of the Clarion’s article, “Nikiski residents fight back against rampant property theft”. Non-violent crime is accelerating here in our State and I bet it is in your area as well? The State Patrol has a real challenge meeting the need. They are having great difficulty filling vacancies. There are currently 16 State patrol vacancies Statewide.

As a potential steward of your resources and property rights, I would strongly recommend rejection of this Ballot initiative.

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