California Will Get Their Pot Tax

Bad day for dopers:

California's tax collectors want their share of the burgeoning medical marijuana business.

The state Board of Equalization announced Thursday that medical marijuana dispensaries are not exempt from paying sales tax.

The decision reaffirms current policy that the selling of medical marijuana involves taxable tangible property, the board said.

The decision, reached in a vote Wednesday, involved the Berkeley Patients Group Inc., a Northern California dispensary, which maintained that marijuana should have the same exemption from sales tax as other medicines prescribed by doctors. Audits conducted for the period of July 1, 2004, through June 30, 2007, found that the Berkeley Patients Group owed the state in excess of $6.4 million in taxes and interest.

Pot today, Viagra tomorrow. Recreational drugs.