(Jacksonville.com) TALLAHASSEE — It might not solve the state’s budget crisis, but a bipartisan pair of lawmakers think they’ve found another item that should be taxed: the bong.

Sen. Steve Wise, R-Jacksonville, and Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, have both filed legislation that would subject a range of pipes often used to smoke crack or marijuana to a 25 percent tax.

“What we hope to do is get rid of the charade, the hypocrisy,” Rouson said.

It’s something of a personal crusade for Rouson, who can still recite from memory the date he finally broke his own substance-abuse problems. The lawmaker said he’s been clean for more than 11 years after struggling with crack, alcohol and marijuana.

Wow, he still has enough memory to remember a single date in his own personal history.  What a feat.  I can still remember my first ever junior high locker combination (9-18-36).  Whoo-hoo.

Wise said, the aim is to increase the cost of peddling the pipes.“We’re trying to get to the wholesalers and jack up the price big-time,” Wise said.

So let’s see, these two geniuses, Senator Ironic Surname and Representative Memory Master, are going to combat the head shop industry by taxing pipes and bongs that remain legal because the pipe or bong itself isn’t illegal until someone smokes pot out of it.  The problem, you see, is that they can’t just shut down the “charade” because technically, you could smoke tobacco out of those pipes and bongs.

OK, besides the two obvious questions, “Why not just tax the pot they put in the bongs?” and “Won’t people just make apple / potato / honey bear bongs?”, I’m seeing a third question that’s a bit more subtle: how do you define a tax on certain legal items you don’t like because people do illegal things with them without also taxing the similar legal items people don’t do illegal things with?

In other words, how do you tax a pot pipe without taxing the tobacco pipe?  I suppose you define its composition (e.g. made of glass) and construction (e.g. has a carb) and tax only those, but if you do that, aren’t you just making a stronger case for the legality of pipes and bongs that will be made to beat the tax?  Here’s a plastic bong with a cork in the carb… is that subject to the 25% tax now?  If not, is it now defined as a tobacco pipe under Florida law?  What about this stainless steel pipe with screwed-on disposable bowl, carb, and mouthpiece covers and a carabiner for your keys?  Is it a pot pipe or a decorative keychain?  What’s the tax on keychains?

Besides, they specifically allow an exemption for hookahs, because of the Middle Eastern cultural aspects.  So let me get this straight: a foreign culture has centuries of history smoking flavored tobaccos from a multi-user bong, that’s OK, but our domestic culture has decades of history smoking cannabis from a single-user bong and that’s not OK.  And of course, nobody would consider buying a not-taxed-25% hookah and smoking cannabis out of that, would they?

If you could write statutes that distinguish the difference between a pot pipe and a tobacco pipe in order to tax them separately, wouldn’t you be able to write statutes to just make the pot pipes illegal?