Today the world watches the Vote on Prop 19

I saw this quote at Reddit earlier this November Election day. I feel that this simply describes how cannabis consumers truly feel about prop 19, the world watches California today!

"Today, at the ripe young age of 50, I made my best vote ever.

Today I voted for sanity, and kindness and compassion over insanity, hate and fear.

Today I voted to move my state ever forward, leading the way for the nation.

Today, with actual tears in my eyes, I voted to legalize cannabis."

LINK: please Redditors vote up the original submission!



I wish I could have cast a vote for 19,
and the Freedoms it represents!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon the father of Modern Prohibition

Nixon did more harm to free thinking & the freedom of speech than any other American has, think of the deaths and atrocities tied to Nixon's reign of power. But he got what he wanted WAR, and to this day we are fighting against the "war on drugs" that Nixon began.


Vote Yes on Prop 19 end Nixon's reign of terror!

From: consortiumnews.com

In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed Pennsylvania Gov. Raymond P. Shafer to chair a national commission to report on the effects of marijuana and other drugs and recommend appropriate drug policies. Though Shafer was a former prosecutor and was known as a "law and order" governor, he did not give Nixon the alarmist findings that the President wanted.

Among the Commission’s findings were:

- "No significant physical, biochemical, or mental abnormalities could be attributed solely to their marihuana smoking."

- "No verification is found of a causal relationship between marihuana use and subsequent heroin use."

- "In sum, the weight of the evidence is that marihuana does not cause violent or aggressive behavior; if anything marihuana serves to inhibit the expression of such behavior."

- "Neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety."

- "Marihuana’s relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it."

An unhappy President Nixon called Gov. Shafer on the carpet and pressured him to change the Commission’s conclusion saying, "You see, the thing that is so terribly important here is that it not appear that the Commission’s frankly just a bunch of do-gooders."

Shafer declined to change his conclusions, and Nixon declined to appoint him to a pending federal judgeship.

LINK

Nixon's reaction to the findings of the Schafer commission's report, shows the war on drugs began from political motivation and not from concerns for the publics safety.
Today the war on drugs is:
a war on marijuana,
a war on the general public,
a war on personal freedoms,
a war that must end now!

Deaths by Marijuana Prohibition

Marijuana is a non-toxic herb that was categorized as a schedule 1 controlled substance so a few could profit. It has been known by most intellectuals that the current marijuana law is more dangerous to society than marijuana its self.

We have had several deaths in the US this year that were marijuana victims killed by law enforcement officers, from shootings to tazering of marijuana users whose lives were ended from choking on marijuana they were trying to swallow. It is so sad that marijuana prohibition is responsible for dozens of deaths each year.

But we still have those that fear legalization no matter the cost to society or individual users. Law Enforcement is to addicted to their marijuana prohibition profits and fear having to work fighting real crime.

Many of us think our society would be much better off if marijuana prohibition was ended to save lives and strengthen our economy. As one California business owner recently stated:

“The marijuana patches don’t bother me,” Miller said. “But I don’t like the shootouts.”
LINK

Lets make our world a better place for all of us!

Taxation not Prohibition!

Marijuana, Medical or Legal?

Every time I do a Google search for marijuana I see hundreds of busts. Some of the busts are large and show that cartels, gangs, and organized crime is involved. Others are ordinary citizens caught with a few plants, plants not hardcore drugs. Law Enforcement and the court system know that a lot of these busts are immoral. But they quote laws and forget morals, when money and their jobs are at stake.

Everyday Google has stories of Medical Marijuana care centers, dispensaries and patients being busted or harassed by police and local governments. Police are lobbying for their very livelihood as they fight to keep marijuana illegal.

Oakland city council recently laid off 80 police officers, the police retaliate by naming crimes that they will no longer respond to, unless their Union demands are met.

The department's chief had said in recent days that unless the city could meet the union's demands, officers would no longer respond in person to register sex offenders, or for reports of vehicle accidents, grand theft, identity theft, burglary, embezzlement, vandalism, stray animals and others.
LINK

It is interesting that the crimes that police will not investigate are crimes involving victims, though there is no mention of not investigating marijuana, which is a victim-less crime. There is really something wrong with this picture, the police are using a form of extortion against the very people that employ them and the city they have sworn to protect. Once again the police are putting crimes that they will not make profits from, onto the back burner. While they concentrate on making marijuana busts to pillage, plunder and even kill our fellow citizens.

Now law enforcement has been raiding all levels of the medical marijuana culture and even if the courts decides against police they have ways of making money off the defendants. Remember that, their first trick is grab all assets and leaving the victim broke and lawyer-less, hard to win a court case under those circumstances. OJ would have never got off for growing marijuana! Another trick is storage & impound costs for the victims belongings, to often it is a win win situation for law enforcement when it comes to busting MMJ.

So even though we have made medical marijuana legal, we have left open to many loopholes for law enforcement to profit from arresting MMJ patients, care givers and raiding dispensaries.

I am 100% for medical marijuana, but I feel that many who need it will never have safe access to it while it has an illegal status. For those in need of medical marijuana and the safety of the general public, it is time for;

Taxation not Prohibition!

Rand report BS for anti Marijuana Crusade

The more I see the MSM (main stream media) spin the Rand report, the more angry I become. First every news agency in the country is pushing marijuana prices will drop to $38 an ounce. This is fairly ridiculous as many growers will not drop their price that low. That price does not allow for name branding and the connoisseur value of the famous highly esteemed Cali buds. One very large fault with the prediction of cheap marijuana is the fact the report gives no time line for how long this prediction of $38 an ounce pot will take, leaving MSM spinning it as it would happen instantaneously.

The next prediction is a huge increase in the use of Marijuana, I feel that there will be some more folks trying it. But this might be a good thing as many people may choose to spend their drug and booze money on marijuana. And crime will go down with the price drops, cartels and their street gangs will no longer have the high price on marijuana, so it will no longer be their most profitable item. But street crime in general will go down as marijuana prices fall, people will be able to afford it whether for recreational use, or those that would like to use it for medical use. There is no excuse for medical marijuana users having to pay black market prices for a medicinal herb, its insanity to think bud should cost $300-$500 an ounce!

Next the report goes into a hypothesis on tax evasion where RAND shows that raising tobacco taxes and the overall price of ciggarettes created a black market to evade paying the tax. Well first off the report states prices will fall on marijuana, so even with the new tax it should be cheaper than todays prices. People will be happy to buy it and pay the tax. As for growers they will slowly fade out of the picture with a few exceptions. There are always going to be a few gardeners out there that want to know what goes into their food or smoke, but look how few people have vegetable gardens even now when food prices are so high. How often do you meet someone that is growing their own tobacco to evade taxes and save money?

One recent article goes as far as predicting $1.50 joints by misuse of the Rand data. Lets take a quick look at this presumption. If marijuana dropped to $38 an ounce you would have to add the $50 an ounce tax, now were at $88 an ounce. Now I have never heard of retailers not making a profit so were up to at least $100 and then sales and other local taxes push it up into the $125 to $150 price range. A decent joint weighs 1/2 to 3/4 a gram so how can anyone come up with $1.50 a joint, maybe they roll New York City penners! (extremely small joints).



Lead author Beau Kilmer, the other co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, said the cost of prime California pot -- currently valued at $300 to $450 per ounce -- could fall to as little as $38 an ounce if legalized in California. He said that could mean "$1.50 a joint for high-quality marijuana."
LINK


I'm afraid the Rand report is just FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) to help MSM fend off the November vote for legalization, sad but true.

Taxation not Prohibition!

If you have not read-


The Emperor Wears No Clothes

Here it is online for free!




This is the book that started the hemp revolution. More than 600,000 copies have been sold to date. The print version of The Emperor Wears No Clothes is available in Jack's Hemporium. Jack wants this information to be available to everyone, so he has published the text of the book here on the internet for free.

LINK

Please give it a read!

Oregon Free Marijuana

Just when you think the whole world is corrupt, you find a story that shows there are still caring and compassionate people. I read such a story today and thought it was well worth sharing on this blog. In Oregon a nonprofit marijuana collective has some freebies for those that are in need.


"We all kind of gather and collectively pool our resources together so that patients that have qualifying conditions that are suffering from cancer, AIDS or chronic pain are able to get the relief that they need immediately," said spokeswoman Sarah Bennett.
LINK


Oregon has been open minded to changes to make medical marijuana work. I-28 is an initiative to allow dispensaries in Oregon and polls are running 68% for it.

But we really need to move on to;

Taxation not Prohibition!

New Marijuana FUD and Prop 19 Rand Reports

Prop. 19 approval could decrease marijuana costs, increase consumption report says


The story line is that marijuana price will fall and its use will skyrocket. The report says the price of marijuana may drop to $38 an ounce, though there is no time table to explain how many years this might take.

To calculate the price drop, researchers looked at the cost of growing marijuana in a 1,500-square-foot house.

Why are they basing costs on indoor crops grown in homes rather than outdoor, greenhouse or commercial indoor growing?


The researchers concluded that the wages paid to employees who tend the crop would slip from as much as $25 per hour to no more than $10, just a little above what nursery laborers earn.


Why should the employees of marijuana growers earn $25 an hour, over twice what nursery laborers earn?

If the per-ounce cost dropped to $38 and the Ammiano bill’s $50 per ounce excise tax passed, taxes would account for more than half the cost of the state’s marijuana, an observation likely to inflame marijuana idealists who see it as a natural weed that ought to be treated like an herb.
That high tax creates an incentive for tax evasion that is more financially rewarding than smuggling marijuana from Mexico to California and it could also encourage smokers to turn to the highest-potency marijuana to get more bang for their buck, the researchers concluded.

That would put Marijuana to less than $100 an ounce on store shelves, I think most people would be more than happy to pay said taxes to help the states economy.
As for Mexican pot smuggling, import it and tax it, since their pot is considered a lower grade it would have trouble competing as a black market product with legal products easier to find and purchase.

There is quit a bit written about Tax Evasion. After reading the report I noted in all the circumstance's listed the tax was forcing the products cost to rise. According to the PDF prices could drop 3 to ten times less than they are today. With prices dropping consumers would not be infuriated by the Taxation of marijuana.

Another point I think needs some thought is, will all marijuana prices be the same? Or will it become more like fine wine with quality being a desired trait and by thus demanding a higher price. I feel there will be a market that will support a commercial market as well as a connoisseur gourmet market.

As for the report in general, my opinion is it projects more of the downside of the facts. I think that there are so many possibilities for California to profit that the report did not include that it is hard to consider it anything other than a simple hypothesis and at that one shy of many facts.

From the actual Rand Report:

Future Price
No modern nation has ever legalized commercial marijuana production, so there are literally no relevant data to guide estimates of marijuana-production costs after legalization. Although: (Citation listed on original PDF.)
Link to PDF


Rather than seeing growers shot or sentenced to jail or prison, it makes so much more sense to Tax Marijuana!

Taxation not Prohibition!