the depth of gratitude you owe them is deeper than the mariner’s trench.
Don’t you mean Marinara’s Wrench?
(See, we do know the redwitter.)
2 Likes
Well, some dummies are leaving their edibles where children can get to them, and I hope people will learn to quit doing that. But that happens with all kinds of other legal things as well.
Go Cali go!
CORRECTION: California is not about to “legalize” cannabis. Instead, a bunch of billionaires (like Sean Parker) are making a giant land grab by proposing a 60-PAGE initiative that’s a shitstorm of new regulations designed to destroy the entire multi-billion dollar “mom & pop” cannabis industry (an industry that for obvious reasons does not – yet – have any large multinational players).
The devil is always in the details. Here are some key points:
-
Cannabis is, according to the DEA, “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man,” and is “safer than many foods we commonly consume.” (Full ruling. See pp. 58-59). Keeping it illegal is neither a failed policy nor a mistake. The war on cannabis users a full-scale racist crime against humanity that benefits a bunch of hundred-billion dollar industries A LOT.
-
We do not tax natural botanical medicines, we do not tax prescription drugs, hell, we do not tax strawberries or peanuts (both of which are quantitatively more dangerous than cannabis). Taxing cannabis, which millions of people use daily to treat anxiety, depression and hundreds of other conditions, is unjust and abhorrent. Legalization proponents who think supporting a tax is a good way to get a “legalization” law passed are dupes, plain and simple. They are like Stockholm Syndrome victims thanking their oppressors for that extra slice of moldy bread. All citizens on earth have a god-given right to use this miraculous plant as our ancestors have for literally millenia.
In San Jose, CA, where I fought against any taxation, medical cannabis is taxed at 18.75%. This includes the county tax of 8.75% plus a special 10% cannabis-is-so-dangerous-we-need-to-extort-more-money-from-sick-people tax. Keep in mind many patients, like many Americans, are struggling to pay rent and put food on the table. I work with many patients who have to scrape together the cash for an eighth every time. Adding another 18.75% to their medical bill causes real suffering. And why should “recreational” users (whatever that means) have to pay a tax on a natural plant that offers myriad benefits to mind, body and spirit? -
Because cannabis is so unbelievably safe and effective for so many conditions, it should be completely liberated from all restrictive laws. In Colorado, violent crime and traffic accidents are both down since they loosened their rules on cannabis. In California, suicide rates and traffic accident rates are down as well. Correlation doesn’t prove causality…but the causality will likely to be established eventually (it certainly makes sense intuitively to anyone familiar with cannabis’ benefits). Regardless, the value of cannabis is so overwhelming that citizens should get tax breaks for growing it. No laws should be tolerated that restrict the ability of free peoples to grow and use cannabis.
-
The Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), the “legalization” initiative that California is set to vote on, contains a whole slew of new restrictions, including a requirement of separate licenses for growers, transporters and sellers. It limits personal cultivation, it restricts virtually all use in public places, it restricts use within 1000 feet of a school (which sounds reasonable until you realize whole cities could potentially be zoned off limits). It bans use by those under 21 – who are both a large proportion of regular users and the most common victims of the drug war holocaust – except with “medical” need. The AUMA facilitates a whole new taxing regime. All this for a completely harmless plant that literally has never killed anyone in 10,000 years of documented use. Here’s CA NORML’s assessment, which lists some of the issues with the bill (sadly, but unsurprisingly, they endorsed it anyway).
-
Don’t believe folks who say, “Weed is legal in Colorado (or Washington, or…).” Take a look at all the ways you can still go to jail for cannabis in Colorado. Or Washington. Does this look like freedom to you?
-
Another popular lie: it wasn’t greedy growers who defeated the last “legalization” measure in California, Prop 19, in 2010. It was cannabis users and activists who actually read the initiative and discovered it contained whole new ways to go to jail for cannabis. Prop 19 deserved to die and it did. Just like the Adult Use of Marijuana Act deserves to go down in flames in 2016. VOTE NO!
The devil is in the details. Initiatives like AUMA take millions of dollars to get passed and only people with deep pockets tend to be successful. The deep pockets behind AUMA do not have freedom for the people in mind. If they did, they wouldn’t need a 60-page initiative to set California free of the crime against humanity that is the war on cannabis users.
Here’s one alternative, a single-page initiative that was drafted by an open wiki process and has the endorsement of Ed Rosenthal, the “Guru of Ganga:” http://www.marijuanacontrollegalizationrevenueact.com/
5 Likes
Looking forward to reading the source for this one.
If anyone is seriously wondering about this…
You’re welcome.
If I posted that in the cake thread I’m pretty sure @Melizmatic would do their best to strangle me…
6 Likes
No, botanists smoke Cannabis, as they know that the genus must be capitalized and italicized.
8 Likes
You think the stoners will remember to vote or be able to get off the couch?
I just googled “cake feet” to see whether this was some kind of insult I was unaware of.
It turned out there was something I was quite unaware of.
3 Likes
Hey, or even better, link the ballot measure. I understand it was a pia to find, but the devil is in the details.
1 Like
Add: People with chronic pain.
Just fucking legalize it already. The ban is exhausting, pointless, and expensive. Hell, make legal for people eighteen and up. This isn’t alcohol. We’re not looking at the prospect of thousands of marijuana deaths.
ETA: And while we’re at it, ease up on taxes. This is an idiotic morality tax. It’s not like alcohol or tobacco in creating new social costs. If it’s the price we have to pay because of stupid California property tax freezes, and to get the reticent on board, fine. But the next objective is to eliminate that tax.
4 Likes
This is the one indication for medical cannabis that has very solid research to back it up. And we badly need a non-opioid pain medication. Not just because of opioids’ adverse side effects (constipation being a prime example) but also because opioids fail to alleviate certain types of pain such as neuralgia (for which cannabinoids* have proven much more effective than opioids).
*Yet another reason to use the term cannabis rather than ‘pot’ or ‘weed’.
In a recent cover article for C&En (signs the times are a changing’), the speculation was that cannibidiols alone are most likely to undergo a federal rescheduling. ∆9-THC and other cannabinoids are unlikely to see the same reclassification, unfortunately. But at least people are taking notice that a rescheduling is in order. Unfortunately the only moral question being asked seems to be, “Does this make people feel funny? Yes? BAN IT!” Rather than “Could this help people?” And, “Why would we care if people felt a little goofy?”
1 Like
Exactly. No one questions opioids, whose euphoric effects are so reinforcing that we have an entire industry devoted to helping its addicts quit them.
2 Likes
Unfortunately we’re getting ridiculous about this too. I live with someone who takes them for severe chronic pain, and between insurance companies and the DEA hungry to nail pain docs, it’s starting to get bad. The drugs are effective, he hasn’t developed an abuse problem, and yet the DEA is clamoring to monitor and intervene in cases like his. Why? Because people sometimes take them to get a high. Whoop-de-do. I get that it can results in problems for people, but hassling pain patients and their physicians is a shitty way of addressing those problems.
5 Likes
Cannabis (pps 56-57)
Drug Enforcement Agency Ruling (1988)
4. Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal
effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in
the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented
cannabis-induced fatality.
5. This is a remarkable statement. First, the record on
marijuana encompasses 5,000 years of human experience. Second, marijuana
is now used daily by enormous numbers of people throughout the world.
Estimates suggest that from twenty million to fifty million Americans
routinely, albeit illegally, smoke marijuana without the benefit of
direct medical supervision. Yet, despite this long history of use and
the extraordinarily high numbers of social smokers, there are simply no
credible medical reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a
single death.
_ 6. By contrast aspirin, a commonly used, over-the-counter_
medicine, causes hundreds of deaths each year.
It would be nice if my…uh…friend…yeah…didn’t have to renew his medical card every year.
2 Likes
