In Newsweek.
Tag: medical marijuana
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Taxing Weed
Oakland votes to tax medical marijuana.
It’s expected to raise about $300,000 a year and passed with 80 percentof the vote.
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The future with legal marijuana
There can be a future with legal and regulated drugs.
A drug deal plays out, California-style:
A conservatively dressed courier drives a company-leased Smart Car to an apartment on a weekday afternoon. Erick Alvaro hands over a white paper bag to his 58-year-old customer, who inspects the bag to ensure that everything he ordered over the phone is there.
An eighth-ounce of organic marijuana buds for treating his seasonal allergies? Check. An eighth of a different strain for insomnia? Check. THC-infused lozenges and tea bags? Check and check, with a free herb-laced cookie thrown in as a thank-you gift.
It’s a $102 credit-card transaction carried out with the practiced efficiency of a home-delivered pizza
The story by Marcus Wohlsen and Lisa Leff in the Seattle Times.
[Thanks to Sgt. “they served him to me with his pants around his ankles” T.]
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Taxed Marijuana In Rhode Island?
There’s yet morerationality in the news today!
Let’s stop quibbling about decriminalized marijuana for dying people and get to the heart of the matter: legalize, regulate, and tax. That’s what they’re looking into in Rhode Island. Katherine Gregg reportsin the Providence Journal:
The measure poses a number of specific questions for study, among them: “Whether and to what extent Rhode Island youth have access to marijuana despite current laws prohibiting its use. … Whether adults’ use of marijuana has decreased since marijuana became illegal in Rhode Island in 1918. … Whether the current system of marijuana prohibition has created violence in the state of Rhode Island against users or among those who sell marijuana. … Whether the proceeds from the sales of marijuana are funding organized crime, including drug cartels. … Whether those who sell marijuana on the criminal market may also sell other drugs, thus increasing the chances that youth will use other illegal substances.”
The resolution also cites questions about the “dangers associated with marijuana resulting from it being sold on the criminal market, including if it is ever contaminated or laced with other drugs.”
The panel has until Jan. 31, 2010, to report its findings and recommendations to the Senate.
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Schwarzenegger wants to debate marijuana legalization
This is huge. While I would like all drugs to be regulated, for now I’ll settle for a real debate on the merits of legalizing marijuana.
To me it’s a amazing that simply debatingsuch an issue has been taboo. At least until now. Why? Because prohibitionists are going to lose this debate.
I’ll give Schwarzenegger props for this one.
The storyin the New York Times.
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Taxing Drugs
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement that the federal government will no longer raid medical-marijuana dispensaries was cheered by California dealers as well as state legislators who seek to legalize and tax sales of the drug.
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Marijuana is [estimated as] a $14 billion crop in California. Taxing the drug $50 an ounce… would generate more than $1 billion annually for a cash-strapped state that closed a $42 billion budget deficit just last month.Read Stu Woo and Justin Scheck’s articlein the Wall Street Journal.
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Massachusetts deals with decriminalized marijuana
While the California prison guards helped defeat Prop. 5, stoners nationwide are lighting up splifs in celebration of their marijuana victories: Michigan became the first state in the Midwest to pass a medical marijuana measure. More significantly, Massachusetts passed a referendum decriminalizing possession of less than a ounce of marijuana. Possession will be a civil fine of $100. That’s good (though it won’t do anything to reduce drug-prohibition-related violence).
Amazingly, despite the opposition of the governor, most politicians, and all of law enforcement, the referendum was supported by 65%of voters.
Arlington Chief Frederick Ryan was stupid enough to admit that without crazy harsh penalties for marijuana, it will be harder to get people to work as police snitches. Why is Chief Ryan stupid? Because he just admitted something that is almost assuredly against his own department’s regulations and perhaps illegal and unconstitutional, to boot. You see, you can’t tell people to work undercover for the police and if they don’t, you’ll through them in jail. Of course that’s what happens all the time, but it’s not allowed.
Everybody knows snitches work for the police to save their own hide and shouldn’t be trusted, but you’re not allowed to officially offer them a quid pro quo. In theory, and legally, all confidential informants work voluntarily because they want to do the right thing.
Frank Pasquerello, a spokesman for the Cambridge Police Department, wondered whether officers will have to start carrying scales. Uh, Frank? No.
Chelsea Chief Brian Kyes, more of a thinking man, wonders what this will mean for issues of probable cause. That’s a good question. I’d like to know the answer.
Boston commissioner Edward F. Davis seems to have a good head on his shoulders. He said the law should not be harder to enforce than others on the books: “I’m disappointed that it went through… but I don’t think the sky is falling by any stretch of the imagination.”
The whole story by David Abel of the Globeis here.
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60-day supply of weed
In Washington state, it’s officially 24 ounces and 15 plants. That’s a lot of marijuana.
In Holland, by the way, you’re only allowed to have 6 plants. And a “coffee shop,” the place that legally sellsmarijuana, is only supposed to hold 16 ounces at any given times (but for practical reasons, that limit is often ignored).
Here’s the article in the Seattle Times about what is now the legal limits for a “60-day supply of medical marijuana.”
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How medical marijuana is transforming the pot industry
Last night I read a great article in the New Yorkerabout the new sort-of-legal-at-the-state-and-local-level but still very-federally-illegal California medicinal-marijuana industry.
I’m very curious to see how this system evolves and is regulated. It just might work. And it may be a good model for other states. At the very least, it’s starting to make California dependent on the tax dollars it brings in.
Emily had come to Humboldt ten years ago as a young activist, working to save old-growth redwoods. She first encountered marijuana plants after she picked some edible mushrooms on a friend’s land, cooked them up in marijuana-laced butter, and ate a good meal with some wine.
[…]
Emily decided to stay in the mountains. She loved the odd mixture of people who lived in a place with no apparent cash economy…. Gazing at the setting sun, Emily said, “I think a lot of those people were drawn up here for intuitive reasons—soul reasons, or whatever.” The problem with growing pot back then, she said, was that it was illegal, and that changed you. “You had to carry a gun and be scared of people, and you lost track of the reason you came up here.”
[…]
There were fewer stories in the newspapers about people being bound and gagged by cash-hungry gangsters.
