Also, just to be the best kind of correct, this update is on the linked news blurb:
However, slogging through the details of the proposition’s text, it appears this might be because their concerns about getting a piece of the action were addressed:
My prediction is that the Teamsters are going to get quite a say in those “safety” standards. I don’t have time to wade through too many details but it also includes terminology definitions that imply that their desire to see retail and distribution separated as with alcohol is at least partially indulged, though it seems businesses that are small enough (?) will be allowed to do both. Bloody fucking hell, can we do just one thing that doesn’t result in everyone jockeying to get their snouts in the trough? The governments salivating over tax revenue (and possibly blunting the effect on the black market by grabbing for too much) has been bad enough.
“Hemp” is usually used to refer specifically to industrial cannabis, e.g. for fibers or seeds. Plants grown for that aren’t great for medical/recreational use…
Only in recent history or in other languages. In English, the plant has been known as hemp and “cannabis” was only used by botanists up until 1848 when the first reference to it meaning the intoxicating flower came to be (according to the OED). You can find English references to people smoking hemp in books from the 1700s. Though if you go forward into the 1800s, ganja and bhang are brought in from Hindi and Sanskrit into English and quite popular.
for those rallying against the black market and calling them selfish for opposing legalisation…who the fuck grew and supplied you with your weed for all those years? the depth of gratitude you owe them is deeper than the mariner’s trench.
Well, you can add one more vote “for”. I registered to vote in California last month.
If anyone remembers that little hike I took from Wichita to Austin a couple of years ago…
I met a guy who was in the process of moving to Washington state to run a pharmaceutical pot farm he built after selling his trucking business.
I wonder if it might help to contact him and see if he might be able to shed some light on what kind of fallout California growers might expect?
A bunch of murderously violent outlaw bikie gangs, mostly. Who also provide for much of my nation’s methamphetamine, black-market firearms and motorcycle theft problems.
I would be delighted to see those fuckers put out of business.
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.
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.
