cannabisnews.com: Elizabeth Nickson Knows How to Pay Her Taxes!





Elizabeth Nickson Knows How to Pay Her Taxes!
Posted by FoM on May 19, 1999 at 07:28:02 PT
Source: The Globe and Mail
Earlier this spring, I staggered down to the bottom of the 12 hectares of blasted heath and haunted forest on which I am privileged to pay taxes. Intrigued by white blobs in the distance, I inched my way over the creek atop a log, to find six white plastic pots in which someone had been growing marijuana, one plant to a pot. 
The friend who accompanied me, something of an expert in these matters, pointed out that someone had been squatting a dope crop on my land, and that one plant, if fully mature, could be worth as much as $3,000. That impressed me. I was looking at a year of university or a used BMW in less than a square metre of space, and immediately started calculating what I could make if I plowed under the haunted forest.Now pot makes me paranoid and catatonic, so as a rule I avoid it, but many of my friends do not. The fact that it is illegal is just one of those laughable anomalies of modern life that lead you to the inescapable conclusion that government is truly a blunt instrument with oppressive tendencies. In my experience, it seems to be a benign drug that makes most people relaxed, hungry and fun to be around. Studies have been unable to establish that the use of marijuana leads to the use of more pernicious drugs. In fact, marijuana has many therapeutic qualities that legal intoxicants do not have. One of the most responsible people I know, the managing editor of an enormously successful international magazine, comes home every day and has a cup of tea and a joint. She can then can deal with her second job as a single parent to two lively, happy young girls. For this we're paying to put people in jail?But what truly interests me is the economics of pot. Out here in the land of permanent recession, just about every resource worker is on the verge of unemployment -- or is already there. The pacific salmon fishery is dead and the forestry business lost more than $1-billion last year. Besides, after you've been here a while you realize cutting down trees for money is a bad thing, not to mention a wildly unpopular thing.Even those who log for a living have to go and drink massive amounts of beer every night and throw up in the parking lot to get over their iniquitous task. But marijuana, according to the Economist magazine last fall, is British Columbia's biggest export industry and a huge money spinner. What's more, the B.C. bud is the best in the world: an actual competitive advantage for Canada. The seeds that thousands of growers in B.C. have cultivated over the last 30 years now have a THC (psychoactive) content of an astonishing 30 per cent; the product is worth 10 times more than Mexican marijuana.An estimated one in 10 B.C. residents are thought to either use or grow marijuana. When you discount for seniors and children, that's an impressive number, which can only give rise to the question of the morality of a law that excludes them. Furthermore, the annual dollar value of the crop has been estimated to be as much as $4-billion.In fact, it is arguable that were it not for marijuana, B.C. would have gone under a long time ago. And if the profits were taxed, there would not be the dizzy deficits that made Canadian Bond Rating Service downgrade the province's credit rating to a humiliating AA- a few weeks ago.So let me make a modest proposal: Legalize it, for heaven's sake. Let's grow hemp to replace paper products. The place will be flooded with peaceful happy tourists, who have great ideas but can't remember them. And all those people who rabbit on about the irreplaceable biodiversity in the soil of the Pacific rain forest will stop depressing and confusing me. And I can plant the blasted heath with something that will pay my crippling property taxes. Elizabeth Nickson writes a column in this space every Wednesday. She lives on Saltspring Island, B.C.
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Comment #3 posted by gord s on June 15, 1999 at 18:02:28 PT:
photo
please lose the g and m photo.you r a beautiful lady, it does b\not do you justice.
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Comment #2 posted by gord s on June 15, 1999 at 17:37:15 PT:
ss island
tell mi about ss island.How did you get there.And what is it like?
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Comment #1 posted by gord s on June 15, 1999 at 16:56:16 PT:
your column
im heartened to see your concern for the bc economy.as an eastern canadian can i but agree...congrats on your column....i look foreward to wednesdays...its my new exciting dae of the week! youre lucky to be off that island. How did you end up with these western hectares anyway?
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