Government profiting from "vice"
I am enough of an American to feel that much that is evil should be legal and that moral mission-creep is an intrinsic sickness of government (and busy-bodies in general) leading to thinking that the law exists to curtail all "bad" things.
I think drugs and prostituion and gambling should be legal. And I do NOT think these things are an avenue for government revenue. (Beyond normal business and sales taxation.)
To say, "Legalize it and tax it (at high rates)" is perverted. The government should not be a pimp, drug-dealer or operator of gambling establishments. It is not good to be drug-dealer or gambling profiteer and the government should be good.
99% of things I would advise my child to avoid should be legal. (Like being a lawyer, riding a motorcycle, watching Fox news...) The government should not be dispensing bad things, nor outlawing most bad things.
And special taxation is a form of outlawing things. It is the use of overwhelming state power to force people into living one way or another. Imagine levying a special surtax on going to church or voting Democratic or reading romance novels. (At some point a tax is a prohibition. It becomes a fine. A $100 tax for spitting on the sidewalk is hard to tell from a $100 fine for spitting on the sidewalk.)
Yet we justify special taxation of cigarettes and alcohol. The argument that the taxes defray costs associated with those things is gibberish because we do not do that even handedly accross all things that affect government outlays. Why are Twinkies favored over Cigarettes? Should people who exercise and eat right get a partial tax refund on their cigarette taxes? (Booze and tobacco taxes started as vice taxes and then, because they already existed, were easy to turn into policy taxes aimed at a sort of prohibition by other means. $10/ pack cigarettes are now common in some states.)
And we justify state lotteries, which is incredible. How the hell can the government be involved is selling the worst gambling proposition ever devised?
If a thing is not such an absolute threat to the public welfare that it must be banned then should be treated just like anything else.
And just because something is legal doesn't mean the government should be involved with it. (Why doesn't the government open title-loan stores and fortune telling parlors and operate Ultimate Fighting matches?)
It is utterly SICK for the government to encourage people to gamble, which it does. Lotteries advertise. State casinos advertise.
Marijuana should be legal because it should be legal. And sales of it should be taxed at the normal sales tax rate in each state... as is the usual case with legal items for sale.