The Disasterous Concequences of Legal Marijuana in Oregon

‘Talk About Clusterf---’: Why Legal Weed Didn’t Kill Oregon’s Black Market
Legalization was supposed to take care of the black market. It hasn’t worked out that way.

[...] Over the last two years, there’s been such an influx of outlaw farmers that southern Oregon now rivals California’s notorious Emerald Triangle as a national center of illegal weed cultivation. Even though marijuana cultivation has been legal in Oregon since 2014, Jackson County Sheriff Nate Sickler says there could be up to 1,000 illegal operations in a region of more than 4,000 square miles. The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, which oversees the state’s $1.2 billion legal cannabis industry, estimates the number of illicit operations is double that.

Local law enforcement officials believe that people from every U.S. state and as many as 20 countries have purchased property in Jackson or Josephine counties. Cartels roll in and offer long-time residents as much as a million dollars in cash for their property, and hoop houses follow soon after the sale is complete. Residents have become accustomed to hearing Bulgarian, Chinese, Russian and even Hebrew spoken at the grocery store.[...]

      Read the whole thing for... many stories of lawlessness. Photos of massive amounts of trash and destruction. It's the lawlessness that is the most disturbing, as law enforcent seems unable to deal with it.

There is also the untold story, of mental health problems. Marijuana triggers Schizophrenia in some people with a family history of it. At the very least, there should be warnings about it on Marijuana products.

Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence

Oregon also has some of the most mis-guided mental health laws in the country, making it impossible to intervene to help people with illnesses like Schizophrenia. We had a tenant who was diagnosed with it after using legal purchased marijuana products. She lost her ability to work and pay rent, and became homeless. Even her family could not legally intervene. It was tragic, and it continues to happen to many unsuspecting people.

Legalization, and the way it was rolled out and implemented, has been disasterous. Drastic changes are needed, before things get even worse.

One Conservative's Understanding of the Real and Genuine Need for Medical Marijuana

My trip to the pot shop

PUEBLO WEST, Colo. — It’s 9 a.m. on a weekday, and I’m at the Marisol Therapeutics pot shop. This is serious business. Security is tight. ID checks are frequent. Merchandise is strictly regulated, labeled, wrapped and controlled. The store is clean, bright and safe. The staffers are courteous and professional. Customers of all ages are here.

There’s a middle-aged woman at the counter nearby who could be your school librarian. On the opposite end of the dispensary, a slender young soldier in a wheelchair with close-cropped hair, dressed in his fatigues, consults with a clerk. There’s a gregarious cowboy and an inquisitive pair of baby boomers looking at edibles. A dude in a hoodie walks in with his backpack.

And then there’s my husband and me. [...]

It's a very compelling story she tells. And as usual, Michelle Malkin has done her homework, like a real journalist should. Read the whole thing for the interesting story and the embedded links.
     

Real Pharmaceutical Marijuana?

Is it comming? Maybe:

Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

[...] Let me introduce you to dronabinol. It turns out that the miracle that is modern psychopharmacology has now shown it IS possible to render pot's analgesic effects into capsule form. And according to a new study, it works just as well as smoked marijuana at tamping down pain. But the capsule's effects last longer, and they come with fewer of the "abuse-related subjected effects" (i.e., feeling high) than does smoked marijuana.

Face it, potheads: You knew it was just a matter of time before "the man" got a hold of weed and snagged all the profits. But who knew he'd suck the fun out of it too?

For the record, dronabinol did induce some of smoked marijuana's other side effects, some of which have medicinal value to certain populations: It did increase appetite, decrease nausea and improve sleep.

The new research appeared Monday in the Nature journal Neuropsychopharmacology. It was authored by a group from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. [...]

The full article goes on with details about how it was tested, which I also found interesting.

     

Will California become the next Amsterdam?

Is California about to go beyond "Medical" Marijuana?

Assembly Plants Seed for Legal Pot in California

The first step to legalize marijuana in California is on a roll.

Lawmakers on Tuesday approved Assembly Bill 390 -- legislation to tax and regulate marijuana. The Assembly's Public Safety Committee voted 4-3 on bill at a hearing in Sacramento. The bill will now be passed to the full Assembly on Friday for consideration.

The bill, authored by San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, would essentially treat pot the same way alcohol is treated under the law and would allow adults over 21 to possess, smoke and grow marijuana.

The law would also call for a fee of $50 per ounce sold and would help fund drug eradication and awareness programs. It could help pull California out of debt, supporters say, raising up to $990 million from the fees.

[...]

"The mere fact that there will be votes in the Assembly to regulate and control the sale and distribution of marijuana would have been unthinkable even one year ago." Retired Orange County California Supreme Court Judge Jim Gray said via a statement from the group. "And if the bill doesn't pass this year, it will soon. Or, the bill will be irrelevant because the voters will have passed the measure to regulate and tax marijuana that will be on the ballot this November." [...]

Read the whole thing. There are law enforcement groups backing this legislation, I don't think it's just some nutty California fluke. People with real influence are backing this. In it's struggle to cope with it's budget crisis, will California become itself into the "Amsterdam" of North America?
     

Cannabis, Communism and Conspiracy Theory all go Together to make this San Franciso Treat

And they were all three proudly on display recently at the 9/11 Truth March and Power to the Peaceful Festival in San Francisco on September 8th.


I lived in San Francisco for 23 years. We moved away from there about 4 years ago. Pat was telling me I must go and look at the pictures and commentary of the event at the ZombieTime blog. At first I didn't want to, largely because that's the sort of thing that made me want to move away in the first place. Pat said it was a good reminder of why we don't live there anymore. I still wasn't interested.

But then he made the following post on his blog:

Going to pot

I used to be a Libertarian. San Francisco was chock full of them. Most of them were pot-heads, didn't like rules and never met a conspiracy theory that they didn't like. At first I thought I fit right in because I'd smoked tons of pot in my youth, didn't like rules and was fascinated by conspiracy theories. I read all about how the Free Masons control the world (at least when the Catholics or the Jews aren't) and how the Bushes are fourth cousins to the Queen and how the cult of Skopsis started the communist revolution in Russia.

You name it, I read it and eventually it dawned on me what the one thing was that conspiracy nuts all had in common: they were pot-heads with wild imaginations and heavy cases of paranoia. I soon parted company with both the Libertarians and pot-heads but I retained many of my small "l" libertarian ideals, one of which was that socalled "victimless crimes" like drug-taking should be legal. Even as recently as a few months ago, I posted on this blog that drugs should be legal.

I've changed my mind. [...]

It's worth reading his reasons in the rest of the post. We were discussing it at dinner last night, so I decided to go look at the photos. Talk about San Francisco Flashback! I've been to/lived near all the places in the photos. And the people, the faces, the events... oh so typically San Francisco.

There was a strong Marijuana presence at the Peace Fesitval:


Zombietime reported that illegal activity was openly being conducted:

[...] Theoretically, one must have a prescription to purchase "medical marijuana" from a licensed dispensary, but these folks were just taking money and handing out cannabis to anyone -- no presciptions required, no ID to check your age, come and get it.[...]

I'm not at all surprised. When we lived there, I knew many people with "Medical Marijuana" perscriptions who were dealing it to their friends. The legal guidelines were routinely flouted, because everyone knew that no one would enforce them. See the Zombietime link for more info and photos about this.

As for the politics of the festival, the Libertarians had a strong presence, as did a large assortment of socialist/communist groups:


As noted by Zombietime:

[...] But Truthism and Ron Paul-itis were not the main themes at the Power to the Peaceful festival. No, the real focus of the event was communism. Yes, communism. And for the sticklers out there: I use the term as a sort of generalized catch-all to describe the many varieties and gradations of communism to be found at the event, including socialism, Stalinism, anarcho-syndicalism, Marxism, Maoism, "people's revolution," and so on. There's no single word that best emcompasses all these political views better than the simple "communism," so that's the word I'm going to use, like it or not. [...]

How can Libertarians and Communists be so closely aligned? Aren't they opposites? Well logically, yes... but what has logic got to do with it?

It's like this. The Libertarian's believe recreational drugs should be legal. The pot-heads of SF are all for that. They are all for anything that lets them flout laws they don't want applied to them. That portion of libertarianism is very convenient for them. But what about the rest of the Libertarian philosophy, against big government? How can so many San Franciscan's seriously claim that you can't be a Libertarian if you aren't a socialist as well? I was told that many times.

It's easily explained. When you live in a Marijuana fog, you don't have to be ruled by pesky logic, you just follow your feelings. Logic is only to be used here and there in bits and pieces, to prop up your half-baked notions and emotional assertions: it's not a frame work to hang your world view on. Thus, you can easily embrace Libertarianism to support your drug use, and socialism to support your welfare checks, and communism to ensure that you don't have to compete (work) for anything, and can just live in your own little stoned Nirvana. Sex, drugs and rock'n roll. The John Lennonist reality. "Imagine all the people..." Imagine being the key word.

And of course, the paranoia often associated with frequent Marijuana use fits in perfectly with conspiracy theory, which was also much on display at the festival:



Every kind of conspiracy theory an emotional thinker could desire. No need to think too deeply, just FEEL and let political correctness be your guide.

Yes, this festival was a real genuine San Francisco treat all right... looking at all the photos, I feel like I was there once again. But it's not a treat for me, which is why I don't live there anymore. A fact for which I am very grateful.


Related Links:

I beg to disagree

Why I left San Francisco #769