Oregon Pot Store Sells 11 Million in 5 days!

[Shogun]

It's all true. Legalizing it will only do positive things for the economy. The amount of money Colorado is putting into their public schools is insane. Just remember...even though it's legal you can still get jammed up. In my location it's getting more common to see OUI Drugs. Hard to prove, but it will still be on your record.

[Tbaronfl]

Funny you should mention it. You know the idea of legalizing is getting more mainstream when you see it posted as a suggested post on FB, LOL

[Shogun]

Maine and Massachusetts are trying to legalize this voting cycle. Should be interesting. This country would save a lot of money not incarcerating nonviolent offenders.

[MoJim]

It's also on the ballots for recreational use in Cal. Arizona and Nevada. Plus another 5 states have it on the ballot for Med mj. According to polls it looks like it may pass in all ten states.

[Charon]

AT this time in NY two years ago, the main harvest festival upstate had all the members of Law enforcement in favor of legalization. So many thought it was gonna pass at least for compassionate care, for those with autoimmunes, etc.

But, once our buggery bollocks Governor got the bill in his hands to sign, without warning, he changed the wording before he signed.

It came down to one can get MMJ, with a certain medical company, if one has three weeks to live. And, stands on one leg on a tuesday, whilst holding a badger with a spoon.

Yes, jabberwocky, but that is the nonsense our governor signed into law. Absent the badger with a spoon. That is an Eddie Izzard, a comic's line.

Good luck to us all because it is a medicine given to us by God I feel. It helps so many illnesses, seizures, anxiety, pain.

Let us hope the DEA will agree and allow states to make decisions again.

[Batgirl]

Not to put on the tinfoil hat again, but my husband will not let us get a card. He is worried we will be put on a federal list and targeted later down the line... it's a fine line when something is legal by state, illegal by the feds.

[Charon]

Even in legal states, if u go to pain management, the PK doctor won't allow u to use MMJ in certain states.

My father would have agreed with ur spouse. We children were forbidden to even protest the Vietnam War and God help us if we put our name on petitions. He was always worried about the F B I watching all even back then.

We never know anymore, do we?

[Mystical]

I hate to say this, but I'm fairly confident that your father and respective husband are correct. Mass surveillance is all to easy today. The one positive is that most the information just gets logged and hopefully never seen because of the lack of resources to physically review each piece of information. But as technology increases and becomes cheaper, I can see a very George Orwellian world. My biggest concerns is how this will effect people's employment. It's such a gray area.

[barq2]

I recently read "Good Cop, Bar War" by Neil Woods, a former undercover drugs squad officer in the UK. He had 14 years undercover busting sellers. What is interesting is that he came around to the legalisation side of the argument. His account focuses on much "harder" drugs than cannabis, but I think the point holds. He likens the outcome of the war on drugs as rather like the cold war (specifically the arms race).

So a gang gets busted by an undercover operator. They go to jail. But the market is still there for drugs, so another gang will fill the vacuum. Understandably, they don't want to get busted the same way, so take ever more violent action to enforce silence. The end point is cities where small time dealers or deal-users know they will end up dead if they say anything. Think of what has happened in Mexico.

I realise I'm conflating all drugs here, and drug might be an unhelpful term when discussing medical use of cannabis. But over all the book is quite a good read, although the writer spends a lot of time explaining himself and justifying actions, I think the basic insight is correct. Some form of controlled market would reduce other forms of crime and really help the problem with gangs in big cities.