Quote:
Originally Posted by Pedestrian
SF Has a balanced city/county budget of $12.3 billion this year (for about 885,000 people). That's more than at least 13 states. It's way more than any state on a per capita basis. I don't think they "need the money". This isn't about money. It's about keeping adults from doing things those in government don't want them to do because they are incapable of keeping kids from doing it too. Why smoking marijuana is such an obvious exception is curious--the kids are also doing that. Is it because the Supervisors are all old Hippies. Well, actually, they mostly are too young for that. But it's clearly about control.
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Of course SF has a balanced budget, all local governments are required by law to have a balanced budget. SF will definitely need more tax revenue(like all local governments do) over the years as demands for public services increase. That $12.3B budget didn't just grow out of nowhere.
Obviously the amount of revenue e-cigs/vapes generate is insignificant to the overall budget, but it just comes across as petty to temporarily ban a product which some businesses in the city depend on to keep afloat. It appears city leaders haven't learned much from the history of tobacco and marijuana usage. While tobacco usage has decreased over the decades due to higher taxes and health education, marijuana usage has grown due to being on the black market. I'm sure most Juul users would rather pay the 20-30% tax as opposed to taking a trip outside of SF. Instead SF goes with a temporary ban which doesn't solve the perceived problem, generates $0 in tax revenue, screws over some small-business owners, screws over Juul which is headquartered in SF, and inconveniences the users of the product.
As i mentioned earlier, vaping is very insignificant to the overall SF economy, but this motion to temporarily just comes across as a complete waste of time. If county leaders really cared about public health they would try to do more about homelessness which are a far bigger risk to public health and the SF economy (tourism mostly).