legalization: a medical growers perspective

here is a link to the text of the legalization bill up for the vote in november.

http://70.32.87.43/documents/initiative.pdf

before i begin; i know this is cynical an pessimistic, but keep in mind that this is the same country that brought you wal-mart, the vietnam war, the bush family, sarah palin, lil wayne, and reality television. please excuse my bad attitude and keep an open mind.

and now my point by point argument of why legalization sucks

1. it's stricter than it is now.

as the law stands now, anyone over 18 can get a prescription for symptoms that come with the common cold. i have personally known a patient that got a prescription before their 18th birthday (very serious health problems). and at every party i go to lately, i can't swing a dead cat without hitting a patient packing weed from a little prescription bottle with a pretty label on it, and at least one or two of 'em grow their own already, COMPLETELY UNREGULATED. and they can sell it to any collective they choose, UNREGULATED. i recently read a news story in which the california supreme court ordered los angeles police to return around 60 pounds of dried bud because he was transporting it to a collective. all he needed to cover his ass was a 150 dollar office visit to a special doctor who gave him a recommendation for something as common as migraines (that's basically legalization). when pot is further "legalized", resale is going to change. which brings me to my next point...

2. competition.

cheaper weed, great, sign me up! wrong! production will be commercialized and moved outdoors. emphasis will be put on quantity and not quality. finicky, low-yielding, potent, indoor strains will be progressively phased out due to the cost efficiency. stores will probably all stock the same 30 strains grown by the same 10 growers (due to regulation) who are allowed to legally grow commercially in the state. independent indoor growers will no longer have a legal sales outlet to pay for their crops. they will then have to sell it on the streets, perpetuating the underground trade that the bill is supposedly trying to eliminate. and these growers aren't all kingpins living like tony montana. a lot of 'em are disabled people who grow just to support a modest middle-class lifestyle in the extremely expensive state of california. this leads to...

3. less jobs for stoners

national companies aren't gonna suddenly stop drug testing. so what do growers do now when their crop is worth half of what it used to be because of legalization? they don't pay their bills, other people lose money, shit gets worse. so to the people who want to pay some phillip morris type company 200 dollars per oz. for some mexican sativa or master kush, rather than 350-400 an oz. to a disabled guy who can't do anything else, for any strain under the sun, i say "fuck you, cheapskate, there's no reason you cant get a 'scrip' and start your own crop,

4. corporations

the people getting involved in the cannabis trade will most likely be big business. migrant workers will probably be used for the harvest and trimming process, maybe electric trimmers, either way, more stoner jobs are lost. cultivation will be centralized among a few major growers, all other growers, who were already allowed to sell their crop to dispensaries, are now criminals once again. all for a little tax revenue.

call me paranoid people, but these are american politicians we're dealing with. someone is getting a paycheck from pot the pot sold in cali, the voters have to decide whether the politicians get it or the growers do. my vote is for the grower. i urge you all to vote no on the "sinsemilla stimulus" bill.


comments and rebuttles welcome.

It should NEVER be illegal to own yourself. Legalizing and taxing is INCREMENTALLY better than illegal and incarcerating, but it falls short of simply leaving people alone. Controlling another person is the underlying problem, marijuana laws and taxing naturally occurring plants are just some of the symptoms when we think we should run somebody elses life.

Oh, Rob Roy....you apply that argument so often. 'Owning oneself' is something I have heard so many times. Needless to say I agree with you 100% in spirit, not so much in action. Make of my drunken remarks what you will

Grow ur own betta than corps. can, sell the best, most potent sheot for more than the industrialized buds.

government regulation is not going to cause the cost to go down..on the contrary it will cause the cost to go up .
just like gasoline ciggs and alcohol . a pack of ciggs wouldnt cost a quarter if it were not for all the government regulation and tax on it.
same with alcohol and gasoline. the tax on a gallon of gas depends on what state you live in ..in my state its like 60 cents a gallon..the government is making 60 cents a gallon in gasoline.
they dont pay for the equipment manpower. or any of the cost associated with running a business ..the business makes 10 cents a gallon or so..the government makes 60 cents a gallon or more.it is not possible for the government to get involved in anything and not have it become more expensive.
the same goes with marijuana.when they get done taxing it and regulating it it will be ALOT more expensive to buy.because it will be ALOT more expensive to produce because now the government mafia wants their CUT of the action.

here's an exerpt from a mother jones article that i thought was comforting...

"Philip Morris wouldn't be allowed to engage in interstate commerce of marijuana, but if, say, Humboldt County agreed to allow unlimited cultivation of cannabis, they could grow it in their own fields and sell it through licensed outlets in any other county in California that also permitted commercial sales.
So what would stop the multinational marketing juggernauts from doing exactly that? For starters, the federal government, which still classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug—as it's required to do by international treaty. That means it's flatly prohibited, and even if the feds decided not to bother prosecuting small-time growers they'd almost certainly go after a Fortune 500 corporation that got into the business. Along with the PR damage of being part of the pot industry, this would almost certainly be enough to keep the Philip Morrises of the world at bay.
So what are the odds of Lee's initiative passing? Recent polls suggest that 55 to 60 percent of Californians support legalization, a margin that's almost certain to drop once the saturation advertising starts. So it'll be a close call. And me? At the time I wrote my marijuana piece, I'd never smoked a joint. I still haven't. But the chances are good that I'll vote to allow everyone else to do it."

hopefully companies won't create a daisy chain of subsidiaries to avoid PR problems. (related factoids: michael moore owns stock in halliburton. philip morris owns nabisco.) and if so, i can only pray that the microbrews will beat the budweisers yet again, cuz i ain't tryin' to smoke a monsanto bowl, and the laws would require packaging to specify origin, thc, content, etc. there's a lot of this bill that needs to be ironed out though, a tax of "no less than 50 dollars" leaves a lot open to discussion. only time will tell, i guess.

Arbitrage. It will be easier than ever.