There seems to ALWAYS be some kind of new drug menace out there requiring taxpayers to fund ever more expensive anti-drug campaigns. Start with pot and move through acid, uppers, downers, hash, flakes, coke, crack, smack and the latest scourge…meth.
Now, if meth is really the major problem and the priority that law enforcement and drug warriors say it is, then why not shift money from less-important programs to combating meth? And why not take cops off J-walking entrapment duty and put them on meth patrol?
No, that would require setting priorities. Instead, the anti-meth crowd did what Big Government activists always do: Ask for “mo’ money.”
But since this year’s anti-meth bill, AB 150, included higher taxes and fees, it also required a 2/3 vote for passage (thanks to the Gibbons Tax Restraint Initiative of a decade ago). And Republicans in the Assembly actually stuck together for a change this week and voted as a bloc - not against anti-meth efforts, but against the higher taxes and fees. Which left the Democrats one vote short of the 28 needed for passage.
If only Republicans in the Assembly had a leader who knew how to use this minority power to obstruct this kind of liberal tax-and-spend agenda on a regular basis.
Posted on May 24th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
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