Taxes – Smoke Master

Woody Harrelson And Bill Maher Complain That Marijuana Taxes Are Too High While Smoking Joints At The Dispensary They Own Together

admin — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 23:22:26 +0000

California should ease up on taxes for marijuana businesses like the one they own together, Woody Harrelson and Bill Maher say.

The actor and comedian jointly complained about the state’s harsh cannabis taxes in a podcast interview released on Monday, known as the unofficial marijuana holiday 4/20.

“California sucks as far as—look, all businesses, but certainly this one,” Maher said on the episode of his Club Random podcast. “They still treat it like it’s poison.”

Harrelson agreed, saying, “They treat it like you’re lucky that we allow you to do this, and so we’re going to tax you 35 percent, which is way more—it’s more than double anything.”

“I don’t even know what’s the second” in terms of highly taxed items, the actor said, citing guns and beer as facing lower rates than cannabis.

“It’s ridiculous that they can just tax the fuck out of you and make it so hard,” he said. “Anyway, I don’t want to bitch and moan. I’m a happy person, generally.”

But Maher said, “I’m not happy about this.”

“I’m never happy when anybody fucks with my money,” he said. “I’m gangster like that.”

Harrelson and Maher own The Woods, a dispensary and cannabis consumption lounge in West Hollywood, where the two smoked joints while filming the new podcast episode.

In California, cannabis faces a 15 percent state excise at the point of purchase, as well as local excise taxes that vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. There are also regular state and local sales taxes that apply, plus taxes at other points of the supply chain such as at the cultivation level. Marijuana businesses can additionally face steep licensing fees in order to do business.

Harrelson further complained during the interview with Maher that “they also don’t allow you to write anything off,” an apparent reference to the federal provision known as 280E that blocks marijuana companies from taking tax deductions that are available to businesses in other sectors.

California lawmakers, however, like those in a number of other legal cannabis jurisdictions, have taken steps to decouple the state tax code from the federal policy, allowing operators to write off business expenses on their state taxes.

Maher, for his part, also noted the cannabis industry’s banking access issues.

“For the longest time, it was a very risky business because you couldn’t put the money in the bank, right?” he said. “The banks wouldn’t take ‘your dirty fucking pot money that you fucking hippies got by smoking pot.’”

“And everybody would have truckloads of cash around,” Maher said. “So of course, they were a target for robbers.”

To that point, Harrelson and Maher’s dispensary was burglarized in what appeared to be part of a string of crimes targeting cannabis businesses in the region.

While the situation is changing and more banks are taking on cannabis clients, as the two noted in the new interview, federal legislation to provide a broad fix for the issue has remained stalled for years.

Maher and Harrelson have long publicly embraced their cannabis consumption.

Last year, when Harrelson was asked to pick anyone living or dead he would like to patronize the dispensary’s cannabis cafe, he zeroed in on marijuana icon Bob Marley. But the actor also conceded that he doesn’t think he could go “toke-for-toke” with the late reggae star.

The actor also got involved in marijuana reform advocacy in California, calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to sign a bill legalizing marijuana cafes that passed in 2024, which he did end up approving.

Earlier this year, Harrelson joked about his experiences getting kicked out of two bars for smoking marijuana indoors with the mother of fellow star Matthew McConaughey.

Harrelson separately disclosed in 2017 that used cannabis to help get through a dinner with President Donald Trump.

Last year, Maher said he didn’t get high before attending a dinner with Trump at the White House, joking that it was a “missed opportunity.”

Image element courtesy of Angela George.

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Nicotine Pouch Taxes and Regulations Surge Worldwide—But At What Cost?

admin — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 01:45:24 +0000

A fresh wave of nicotine taxation is sweeping the United States, and it’s changing the game for smoke-free alternatives. And what started as a campaign to address plunging cigarette revenues has morphed into a broad push that would bring within the same tax framework smoke-free alternatives — especially nicotine pouches. For those who focus on tobacco harm reduction, the stakes are high: taxation is not just a revenue-generating mechanism but an instrument of policy that could help speed up or thwart smoking cessation.

Utah’s recent reforms help clarify this shift. Beginning July 1, 2026, the state will impose a new tax of 11 cents per cigarette, along with a new framework to govern nicotine pouches: $1 per can, with additional charges as the pouch count increases. This replaces older weight-based systems with a hybrid unit-and-volume tax. And updated definitions ensure that all nicotine products, including pouches and e-cigarettes, are explicitly covered in the tax code. On paper, this is modernization. In practice, it indicates a wider alignment: the fundamental products as if they present similar risks.

And Utah is far from alone. Other states, including New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, Vermont and Washington, are proposing or enacting similar measures across the country. Nicotine pouches in many instances are being taxed at the rates historically applied to cigarettes or other high-risk tobacco products. The reasoning is well known — youth uptake, concerns about addiction, funding for public health — but it often neglects an important aspect: relative risk.

Taxing safer alternatives like cigarettes

Why does this matter? Because nicotine pouches are not cigarettes. They don’t have tobacco leaf, don’t burn, and create no smoke. There is an increasing body of evidence to suggest they are far less harmful than smoking cigarettes and can have a meaningful role in cessation.” Research on contemporary oral nicotine products suggests they may assist smokers in transitioning away from combustible tobacco — especially in conjunction with behavioral support. Real-world data from Nordic countries provide additional support for this consideration; in these countries, the wide adoption of oral nicotine has been associated with dramatic buildups in smoking prevalence.

But U.S. fiscal policy seems headed in the other direction. The most high-profile example of taxation as deterrence probably comes from New York. The state is proposing a 75% wholesale tax on nicotine pouches, the same as traditional tobacco products. The measure is projected to raise billions in revenue, but it has drawn huge backlash. The majority of New Yorkers do not support this measure, maintaining that pairing smoke-free alternatives to smoking contravene the principles of harm reduction movement since it removes financial incentive to switch, with less than 50% supporting passage. Some policymakers have even questioned whether a public health strategy can be based on making safer products more expensive than combustible ones.

In Washington State, for example, a 95% excise tax has already gone into effect — nearly doubling the retail price of many nicotine products. Similar actions in Minnesota and Rhode Island highlight an unmistakable trend: With cigarette use falling, governments are widening their tax base to add new categories of nicotine. Just in 2025, dozens of legislative proposals sought to rein in nicotine pouches, a strong sign that the tide was turning against favorable treatment for all brands.

What are the repercussions?

Economic modeling and real-world evidence both suggest that excessive taxation of reduced-risk products may delay smoking cessation — or even reverse it.

But this method comes with a cost. Economic modeling and real-world evidence both suggest that excessive taxation of reduced-risk products may delay smoking cessation — or even reverse it. If the price gap between cigarettes and competitors narrows, so does the incentive to switch. Cost is still one of the most potent motivators for adult smokers seeking lower-risk alternatives.

In Thailand, officials have adopted a far different — but equally aggressive — tack. Instead of taxation, enforcement has served as the main tool. The government has stepped up enforcement against sales and marketing of nicotine pouches, especially in tourist areas and on online marketplaces. These include fines and possible jail time, reflecting widespread concerns about youth use and unregulated sales. If couched as a public health intervention, such stringent enforcement could drive consumers into underground markets, where product quality and safety are far less assured.

Opposing such avenues, groups like the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA) have long advocated another way. Instead of blanket taxation or prohibition, CAPHRA promotes risk-proportionate regulation: rigorous age controls, well-defined product standards, and clear labeling guidance, backed by policies that preserve accessibility for adult smokers. Their stance is bolstered by both scientific research and actual consumer experience from around the world, where harm reduction approaches are evidenced to work in reducing smoking rates.

Time to stop ignoring science and real-world evidence

This makes the current wave of U.S. tax hikes look increasingly out of step with global evidence. Nowhere is the contrast clearer than in Sweden, which just reached its lowest-ever smoking rates. Among adults, daily smoking prevalence has fallen to just 3.7%, fueled in large part by the widespread availability of oral nicotine products like snus, as well as nicotine pouches. Instead of demonizing these substitutes, Sweden has incorporated them into a harm-reduction paradigm — outcomes over ideology (but more on that in our next article.)

The result is not just fewer smokers, but vastly lower rates of smoking-related illness.

Given all this, taxing nicotine pouches the same way as cigarettes seems less like good policy and more like using a blunt tool. While it’s important to address youth access and product standards, these issues can be addressed through targeted regulations rather than broad taxes that may have unintended consequences.

Ultimately, the dispute boils down to a basic question: Does public health policy need to reflect relative risk? If we are trying to reduce smoking, the single largest preventable cause of death worldwide, then the answer should be clear. Policies that make safer alternatives less accessible, less affordable, or — not least — simply less enticing than cigarettes are not only counterproductive; they are, in the face of a mounting body of evidence, increasingly hard to justify. And as Sweden’s experience shows, there is an alternative.

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High Marijuana Taxes Don’t Effectively Deter Use, Study Shows, Contrary To NYT Editorial Board’s Claim

admin — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 23:59:43 +0000

There’s no meaningful evidence that imposing higher taxes on marijuana would steer people away from using it—contrary to a claim recently made by the The New York Times editorial board—according to a new scientific analysis of cannabis consumption and tax data.

In fact, raising the cost of cannabis sold at state-licensed retailers could lead people to return to the illicit market to obtain cheaper (and untested) marijuana that carries its own public health and safety risks.

The new report, authored by Ohio State University (OSU) Moritz College of Law researchers Dexter Ridgway and Jana Hrdinová, drew on nationally representative survey data from federal sources and marijuana tax rates in states that have enacted legalization to test the idea that putting a higher premium on cannabis for adults could positively influence consumer behavior and deter heavy marijuana use.

In its editorial, the board emphasized that while the federal government imposes taxes on alcohol and tobacco sales, it doesn’t do the same for marijuana—which is no surprise given that the plant remains federally illegal, as do the state-licensed shops that sell it. The board said “increases in tobacco taxes have been a major reason that its use has declined during the 21st century, with profound health benefits.”

“The first step in a strategy to reduce marijuana abuse should be a federal tax on pot. States should also raise taxes on pot; today, state taxes can be as low as a few additional cents on a joint,” the editorial argued. “Taxes should be high enough to deter excessive use, on the scale of dollars per joint, not cents.”

The idea that high marijuana taxes are causally associated with lower usage rates isn’t exactly settled science, the OSU report said, as states with varying tax rates for cannabis have seen disparate trends in consumer behavior.

“More generally, at a time when the legal cannabis marketplace is a patchwork of ever-changing state laws and industries, the overall relationship between tax rates and marijuana use rates (and especially heavy use rates) is quite unclear,” the researchers wrote.

They pointed out, for example, that marijuana is taxed at the highest rate in Washington State (43.5 percent), and the state has the sixth highest usage rate (22 percent) in the dataset. By contrast, New Jersey has the lowest tax rate (6.6 percent) and reports the lowest usage rate (14.4 percent), ranking in the bottom half nationally.

“These patterns do not imply that taxes have no effect on consumption, but they do suggest that assuming marijuana users will respond to taxation like tobacco users is overly simplistic,” the report says.

Via OSU.

Ultimately, the OSU report—which assessed 2023-2024 survey data from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)—concluded that “there is no apparent correlation between marijuana tax rate and marijuana usage rate.”

“Merely looking at tax rates and usage rates ignores the myriad of other factors that can influence the rate of use, such as the maturity of the legal market, the ease of access to product affected by number of dispensaries per population, the price of the product in a given state (since marijuana cannot be traded across state lines, the way states regulate the number of licensed growers significantly affects availability/price of product) and many other factors,” the researchers said.

“The New York Times editorial soundly stressed the importance, from a public health perspective, of limiting excessive or high potency marijuana use. Additional data is needed to assess the role of tax increases to deter the riskiest marijuana uses and users, and policy progress here will likely require a broader regulatory approach, besides taxation. These 2023 data suggest no simple inverse relationship between state tax rates and marijuana use, and effective policy must account for market structure, product availability and the wide availability of illicit product.”

Via OSU.

To be sure, where the editorial board, advocates and researchers seem to align is in their shared position that the federal government’s decades-long prohibitionist policies and the resulting lack of robust regulations is a problem. States have been passively permitted to participate in the cannabis experiment without federal safeguards in place or guidance on policy issues such as cannabis tax rates or potency limits for marijuana products, for example.

The marijuana tax policy discussion has continued to play out in states and cities across the U.S. where marijuana laws are being considered or tweaked. There might not be consensus around the appropriate tax rate for cannabis, but there’s a general understanding that governments must balance revenue interests with the need to make regulated cannabis products cost-competitive with the illicit market.

The Times editorial board further argued in its piece that an “advantage of taxes is that they fall much more on heavy users than casual smokers.”

“If a joint cost $10 instead of $5, it would mean a lot of extra money for someone now smoking multiple joints a day and may change that person’s behavior,” it said in the editorial, which has faced scrutiny from multiple skeptical sources. “It would not be a big burden for someone who smokes occasionally.”

But as the OSU analysis argues, there’s “reason to fear that significantly higher tax rates for marijuana products could shift use into unregulated and more dangerous illicit markets rather than to deter or reduce problematic cannabis use.”

At the federal level, marijuana may soon be moved from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which wouldn’t federally legalize the plant but would free up certain research barriers and allow state-licensed cannabis businesses to take federal tax deductions they’ve been barred from under Internal Revenue Service (IRS) code 280E.

That latter effect is expected to give the cannabis sector an economic boost, but because marijuana products would remain illegal to sell under federal law, rescheduling alone wouldn’t necessarily create a clear pathway for a new federal tax as the Times editorial board is proposing.

Removing the 280E penalty could also potentially bring cannabis prices down if industry operators decide to pass any of their tax savings on to the consumer.

“The federal government needs to be part of these solutions. Leaving taxes and regulations to the states threatens to create a race to the bottom in which people can cross state lines to buy their pot,” the board said. “Congress can set a floor, as it has done, however inadequately, with alcohol and tobacco, and states can build on it as they choose.”

Various congressional bills to legalize cannabis have included federal tax provisions, with specific appropriations in mind for the revenue, but none of those have advanced in the current Congress.

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