An Israeli member of parliament has suggested a new law that would limit the price of popcorn in the cinema.

Cinema companies broadly condemned the idea, drawing on the argument that markups on concessions sustain the industry’s profits, while filling seats merely lets them break even.

If MP Carmel Shama‘s proposition gains traction with lawmakers, it should be accompanied a requirement that customers sweep up after themselves, because if Israeli moviegoers are anything like American ones, that’s where half of the popcorn ends up.

More to the point, as anyone who’s ever done business in the real world knows, the $2.50 premium compensates someone else for—among other things—the time and the occupational risks of cooking it, the cost of manufacturing and disposing of single-use containers, and the equipment and personnel costs associated with serving food and drink.

But best of all, it ensures that the total cost of seeing a movie remains low for people who have freed themselves from the need to eat incessantly while being entertained.

But I’m afraid Mr. Shama is beyond being reasoned with:

“We have to put an end to this. The public should not have to mortgage their houses for a snack and a soft drink,” Mr Shama told the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth.

Volunteers are going into the gardens to clean up trash, dead animals and pesticides to return the land as close to its original condition as possible. But it could take years for the land to recover, because little can be done once fertilizers and pesticides seep into the ground or stream beds.

George Anderson of the California Department of Justice added, “For every acre of marijuana grown, 10 acres are damaged.”

The State of California has struggled for years with so-called “guerrilla gardens”, perhaps most notably in the 1.1-million acre Sequoia National Forest, where authorities seized 10,000 plants last year. According to the National Parks Service, the Mexican cartels left a sizable chore for police and volunteers: 5,800 pounds of garbage, which included 75 propane canisters, 5.8 miles of hose, and empty containers of fertilizer, pesticide, and rodenticide.

In an underground cannabis industry, guerrilla growers have two short-sighted objectives: 1) produce as much cannabis as possible and 2) don’t get caught. They don’t care what happens to the land, because they can always find more land—especially in California, where parks make up at least 15% of the state’s land area. In the absence of long-term responsibilities that come with property ownership, it’s easy to see why the guerrilla growers burn through natural resources with such wanton neglect.

Farmers of legal substances like corn and wheat improve and preserve their land by employing crop rotation and other modern agricultural innovations and by using chemicals with caution or not at all. If cannabis were regulated as a crop, these tax-paying farmers could grow the plant in a way that does not threaten natural resources and park visitors.

Related links:

• Cartels Use Sequoia National Forest to Grow Pot (NPR)