In my area Mexican pot goes for about $60 to $80 an ounce, less if people have really good connections. A $50 an ounce tax would be too high here for that dirt cheap low grade product, which is what most pot smokers around here use because they don't want to pay several times as much for fancy indoor grown stuff. I'm all for legalizing pot though. I think they should start with just regular sales taxes though to knock out the black market and then slowly start adding in excises as legal growers and distributors get their systems dialed in and competition drives the prices down to a fraction of what they are today. Eventually what they could do is tax it at different rates for low potency and high potency product, have two or three categories taxed at different rates. It will get so cheap that it won't cost that much more than tobacco in bulk wholesale and there will be a lot of room for taxes. High taxes would be the only thing that could keep the cost to consumers anywhere close to what they pay today. They just need to be mindful that if they go too high and prices to consumers start getting higher than they are today in the black market that they will encourage a organized crime to produce and sell black market marijuana and that would negate much of the benefit of legalization.
In my misspent youth I was some what familiar with the drug culture. So I know a little about MJ.
Remember that they call marijuana Weed for a reason; it will grow almost anywhere.
And as I recall there was never any effort to protect the seed stock of the “good stuff”. Whenever you got a bag of higher quality MJ there was always a few seeds in the bag.
Let’s also remember that there is no shortage of people in every state who are experienced growers of MJ.
Once they cultivation and sail of MJ is legal it will take no time at all for the price of marijuana to be forced down to the point where the good stuff is selling for $10 per ounce or less.
But you are correct that $50 per ounce is probably to high and that it would support a black market at that level. Some study would need to be done to determine the optimum level of tax that MJ could support.
On the other hand once it is legal there may need to be some sort of license required to grow MJ. Like I said above it will grow most anywhere with little effort. You could grow it in your garden or in a pot in your living room.
Why pay enormous taxes if you can grow your own?
Premium, regular and sh*t grades will carry different prices anyway, so the revenue generated will be different. Keep the tax rates the same.
If it is legalized, and a stoner rear ends my truck at a stoplight, I want the right to beat the livin' crap out of him with a tire iron and not get sued.