Scott Morgan does a nice job of disabusing the idiot-enablers of the notion that somehow legalization will be good for the cartels.
Here’s the thing: criminal drug organizations don’t want this “legal platform” you speak of. That’s not how they do business. Their product is grown by day laborers and slaves, not master cultivators. Their business strategy is characterized by assassination and bribery, not Facebook fan pages and free massage Fridays. They have no intention of paying taxes or appearing before local zoning boards, and they can’t compete with American entrepreneurs who are happy to do the paperwork and can explain where their investment capital came from.
Way cool. I’m going to forward that to a friend who, while not a prohibitionist/drug warrior, is a fence sitter put off by all the “it’s natural medicine mon, it will heal the world!!” rhetoric – frankly and occasionally, so am I. He does however relates to the arguments of economics and public safety. We’ve had some good conversations along those lines. I’ve recommended he read ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ as well. Baby steps. Baby steps.
Another of my favorite prohib arguments is that we shouldn’t legalize cannabis since the criminals will just go on to other crimes. It’s hard to debate against stupid.
After being involved in the medical cannabis market for almost a year, I can’t believe that we are not legalizing cannabis for adults. I can’t think of one reason why you shouldn’t be able to go to a local coffee shop / dispensary and buy some cannabis or hash and go home and enjoy it.
Everyone I have encountered in the medical cannabis community have treated me with respect, honesty and good cannabis medicine for my chronic pain and PTSD. I do not think that legalization for all adults will change the dynamics of the existing cannabis market.
This is a far cry from waiting in parking lots or strangers’ houses for a little relief in the form of the criminal market mark-up rate pinched quarter ounce of schwag.
“It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.” George Washington
A statement like that in congress now would receive outcries of derision and ridicule.
Where did all the Americans go? All we have in our legislatures are a majority of lawyers mixed with rich industrialists that pave the way for big industry to enslave the population with draconian laws and regulations so twisted that it takes a lawyer to even start to explain them and most of the time,a lawyer to understand the explanation.
A total crash of the financial system would throw this country into chaos. When their money is no longer worth the paper it is written on,the industrialists lose their control of our legislators and us. When we have to resort to the most ancient form of currency,bartering,
we will have freedom.
A great way to stop this without our economy crashing is to put term limits on our legislators with electorate approval of retirement benefits for the ex-legislator when his term is completed.. It will remove the “cliques” and good old boy clubs in our legislatures.
And it will stop the back door deals if legislators don’t get their pensions and life long health care automatically.
It is because of those cliques and good old boys clubs that legalization of marijuana will have to be done by the people and not our state or federal legislators.
I don’t know how many states have the ability to put legalization on a ballot to be decided by the voters but they will be the only ones to legalize cannabis until the cost of protecting the big industries from hemp and the maintaining of prohibition costs more than big industry wants to spend and federal bureaucracies can get congress to approve.