Editorial: Sure, reduce pot taxes. But California needs bigger fixes to its broken marijuana market

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

47% : It's also a smart, small step toward fixing the state's marijuana mess that was created, in part, by Proposition 64 -- the 2016 ballot measure that legalized the adult use and sale of marijuana.
42% :Newsom wants to eliminate the cultivation tax, a flat per-pound fee paid by cannabis farmers, that has gone up each year even as wholesale prices of marijuana have gone down, squeezing profits.
42% : To help level the playing field for licensed businesses, the state also needs to ramp up enforcement against illegal operators through strategies such as tax enforcement, administrative penalties and power shutoffs.
38% : During those three years, the state would spend up to $150 million annually to support programs that rely on marijuana tax revenue, including youth education and substance abuse prevention, environmental cleanup of illegal cannabis farms and law enforcement.
36% : More than five years after Californians voted to legalize marijuana, the vast majority of pot sold in the state still comes from illegal sellers.
36% : Legalization came with political compromise on taxes and rules that have stymied efforts to move illegal pot operators into the legal marketplace.
35% : That doesn't mean people aren't selling or buying marijuana in those communities -- they're just doing it illegally, using unlicensed shops or dealers.
30% : Industry groups argue Newsom's proposal won't reduce taxes enough to help legal operators compete with the tax-free illicit market, and they're lobbying to cut the excise tax from 15% to 5%.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.