News Jan 15, 2014 at 4:00 am

Legal Weed Looks Likely. But Will Advocates Follow Salem's Lead?

Comments

1
It's extremely unlikely that the Legislature will refer a good, workable measure because for the most part they don't favor marijuana legalization. They see it as inevitable, so are grudgingly working on a bill despite opposing the underlying premise.

Their bill will create a burdensome taxation scheme and with it, a draconian enforcement system. Yup, that's right: "legalization" will inevitably also include stepped up enforcement in order to prevent people from simply opting for cheaper black market marijuana.

They're simply going to convert enforcement of the old crime of marijuana possession into the new crime of possession of untaxed marijuana.

So if you think the Legislature's legalization measure will eliminate racial disparities in enforcement, guess again.
2
Best. Title. Ever.
3
I usually hate alt-weekly pun-headlines. I mean -hate.- But I'm in awe of this one.
4
"staffers at the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP)—which helped design Colorado's legalization measure—warned the Beaver State to wait until 2016 to try again ["Going Green in '16?" News, Jan 30, 2013]. In a high-turnout presidential election year, the thinking went, legalization would be a 'slam dunk.'"

With gay marriage on the ballot as well, turnout should not be a problem.
5
Regulation is not legalization. Only complete, unrestricted freedom is acceptable. Frankly, I could give a shit about the rules. You can't buy decent weed from some inexperienced entrepreneur and experienced farmers won't suspend their operations in order to submit to background checks. State grass will be more expensive than black market because of the tax, anyway. Uruguay is the first country to legalize Marijuana, and they have set the price at $1 per gram. The politicians there are serious about taking the profit out of crime.
6
Dolly dread those are very tacit points. Shitty weed will become commonplace when cowardice is allowed to enter the marketplace.
Interesting analogy to the German Beer Purity laws of the 1500s. Government taxation on beer drove native brewers out in favor of hebrew recipes made with cheap ingredients. The laws were passed because the inferior beer was actually causing malnutriton since beer was a foodstuff then.
7
The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports that Mexican cartels are growing Marijuana in Washington State, and that the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs in exchange for information on rival cartels.

The high tax on getting high keeps the commercial retail price higher than the black market price. With possession being legal for recreational purposes, who's going to be afraid of buying better quality from the black market at cheaper prices than in the State liquor stores?

I say grow your own, and screw everybody. Buy your Californian, Dutch, Spanish, and Canadian bred seeds online from stores located in the United Kingdom; (in accordance with their disclaimers, of course).
8
And then every few years the state of Oregon patches holes in its budget with tax hikes, along with tobacco and booze; undoing a blessed immunity to the cost increases in legal commodities — even to the base rate of inflation. I say we just keep it decriminalized, for recreational use I mean.
9
In Washington, the tax revenue is going to beef up enforcement against non licensed growers, to further insure big, organized crime, and incompetent State licensed producers manage to cash in, as the end user get only shit. So, yeah, Wolkenkaiser, rather than have that situation, I'd have to agree with you.

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