Good idea.
But I have no idea how to stop the downward spiral of a serious flight embarked on to escape reality by using drugs.
Egg in a pan didn't work, but I guess a case can be made that it slowed things down, maybe it kept a few people from dropping from the set of controlled recreational users and into the set of serious addicted / habituated dudes.
Like gambling and all the other 'get a rush' activities that have crossed back and forth over the line of legality, many lives get wasted by the overwhelming social, family and cultural, survival and wartime issues of our world, as we attempt to feel we can measure up in a world where 99.9999999999999% of us are anonymous to all but a special few.What's to be done, what's to be done?

This should have been done 40 years ago. I doubt that spending and funds raised on anti-drug programs is the best use of the money but maybe that's the way it has to be sold for now. We don't spend all the booze and cigarette taxes on anti respective vice programs do we?

It will make pot so expensive in legal outlets that it will still thrive in black markets and that is where the problem is. Oh I know the real problem is that we get crazy on pot and ruin our lives but education about that is all around us. So many people are telling us what NOT to do that we get confused. Some people can drink and enjoy life and some become alcoholics and ruin their life. It will be the same with pot. But getting it out of the back alleys and using the money to help the economy is what saved us after the great depression. They legalized booze. It was one of the things that brought the economy back. It needs to happen now with pot.

@Zanelle - I'm not sure when you last bought an ounce but around here the good stuff costs $300 and up. Once you allow people to grow and trade in the open, a $50 surcharge will only ensure that the price never goes below $60. There's no room in that equation for a black market.

The single most effective period on the war on drugs was in the 80s , in Los Angeles, when a decent sum of money was allocated to education and treatment, focussed on local communities. This worked, and the people running the program very nearly got the government to commit to expanding the program nation-wide. But at the very last minute the politicians decided that the 'war' narrative was a better vote-getter than the 'sympathetic' narrative, so the program was canned and all the money funneled back into guns and police.

I guarantee you that using $50 per ounce to fund education and treatment would have more positive effect in the first decade than a hundred years of prohibition.

Abrawang points out that the taxes on Tobacco and Alcohol don't get used in this way, as some sort of evidence that it's not the best use for the money. Believe me, it most definitely IS the best use of the money. If they spent the alcohol tax money on education and treatment of alcoholics, the world would be a far better place.