3/17/14

GOP to sue administration over legal cannabis; Rand Paul's state cultivation leader



You can't make this shit up.
If you’ve been wondering how Darrell Issa is spending his time since the Benghazi scandal proved to be a non-scandal, he, along with several of his colleagues want to sue President Obama for not arresting people for marijuana in states where it’s legalized. Legislation was actually passed on Thursday to force Obama to crack down on states that have legalized marijuana in any form. [Freak Out Nation]
We Democrats would be foolish not to cheer Sen. Rand Paul (earth hater-KY) as he packs thermite into the basement of his party's world trade center.
Kristin Nevedal chairs the Emerald Growers Association, the triangle's marijuana trade group. The coauthor of an ecofriendly pot-farming guide, she often consults with state and local lawmakers about how to make the industry more responsible. "Prohibition hasn't curbed the desire for cannabis," she says. "So we really need to look at changing our policy and starting to treat it like agriculture, so we can manage it."There will likely still be a niche for the Emerald Triangle growers who started it all, Nevedal believes, just as there has been for craft whiskey distilleries in post-Prohibition Kentucky. Growing really good weed is simply too much work and too much strain on the environment to make sense on an industrial scale. [Mother Jones]
Sen. Paul wants legal GMO hemp: is that want America wants?

Cannabis is already a 35 billion dollar crop in the US.

Most cannactivists see the future of the business as a synthesis of the cannabis equivalents of organic microbreweries, vintners, and greenhouses rolled into (heh heh) cottage industries that can withstand fiduciary and insurance requirements without large corporations running the show.

Recall that California's Prop 19 went down because growers didn't then, and don't now, want to cede control of strains to the state.

Comes this from Doug Fine posted at AlterNet. He talked to a grower named Mark who said:
“It’ll be the end of the small farmer,” he told me. “Foks’ll [sic] be buying packages of joints made by Coors or Marlboro.” Section 40 of Title 27 of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s regulations has 534 subsections. If a black-market farmer is simply churning out quick turnaround, pesticide-heavy, indoor-grown popcorn buds to pay the mortgage, that farmer is going to lose out to Coors-style mass-produced cannabis, because he’s essentially growing a Coors-quality product already.
Danger, though, lurks in other places besides Big Tobacco and Alcohol for the small post-drug war cannabis farmer. The first few years of federal drug peace will be the best of times and the worst of times for the independent cannabis farmer. Just as the end of alcohol Prohibition put bootleggers out of business, the question of who will snatch the cannabis market when the cartels are pulled out of the equation is ultimately up to America’s 100 million cannabis consumers.
We are a litigious society: ways to generate revenue for states can be hammered out in committee in each state legislature to head off some of the torts likely following enactment and to guide law enforcement using most of the same language that governs alcohol use.

Patients seeking cannabis as medicine can be seen by a health care provider and be excused from paying the excise taxes.

Anyone who doesn't see the consequences of Citizens United as guaranteed free speech telegraphed into cannabis law is blind.


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2 comments:

Duffer said...

Top O' the morning to you Lad

California Prop 19 lost in its' go-round because all the "playahs" could not agree on control of the revenue. Control of strains by the State had nothing to do with it. That's BS being shoveled by one faction. It's always about the money.

Growers are battling for a position of strength - rather than being cast as share-croppers for retailers. As in any other endeavor, the growers will need to band together to protect their interests. Continuing to operate underground - that is near impossible to do.

The greed battle in CA is so intense that they won't even agree to resolution for a 2014 ballot effort. The big advertising money (to battle statewide Law Enforcement and GOP dominant local governments in the Valley and down south)will be with-held as the argument rages on.

2016 looks to be the year they want to bet on, but I wouldn't bet on that. Watching Gavin Newsome's efforts as well as the State Democratic leadership for movement in Sacramento.

But you know . . . a citizen-led initiative would always be preferable to anything brought forward by entrenched government interests, read: Law Enforcement.

May the road rise up to meet ya . . .

March 17, 2014 at 7:40 AM
larry kurtz said...

Free enterprise, Duff? What a novel concept!

March 17, 2014 at 4:08 PM

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