For years I have been warning marijuana advocates not to take the easy way out by using medical marijuana as a wedge to “soften up” public sentiment. Regrettably, many marijuana patients had this “we need our medicine now” mentality. Too many medical marijuana people were self-interested only in their needs. Some even stated to me it was more important to legalize marijuana for medical needs than it was to legalize it for all adults. The fact that millions of Americans were and are trapped in the criminal justice gulag did not matter to them, just as long as they got their meds.
As I feared, medical marijuana only muddles marijuana legalization. In the long run, the advent of pundits pushing the medical angle did so at the expense of the larger marijuana consumer population.
By not unifying behind a single issue, marijuana advocates became their worst enemies.
Many marijuana advocates did not see that it was, in fact, a “divide and conquer strategy” that made it increasingly difficult to clear the way for full legalization. After nearly eighty years, and uncounted numbers of people displaced, harmed and destroyed, not by marijuana, but by the government’s senseless but calculated war on marijuana, it’s only in the recent couple of years that we can say that legalization is firmly on table.
Two obvious cases in point are Colorado and Washington.
As reported in the NYTimes, “Washington State’s struggles – and the inevitable comparison with Colorado’s different, smoother path toward retail marijuana – are being watched around the nation… Colorado avoided trouble mostly by acting early. There, state regulators stepped in with strict rules for medical marijuana long before full legalization. And after voters approved legalization in 2012, those regulated dispensaries were put first in line for licenses, forming the backbone of the new recreational market. The dispensaries had supplies of the product in the pipeline – and expertise – which is why recreational marijuana sales started there from the first day of legalization, on Jan. 1, while Washington’s are still weeks away.”
Marijuana is treated as a state’s-rights issue because Congress does not have the moral fiber needed to change the law, this, despite the fact that marijuana was criminalized without any medically cogent reason for doing so. (It is ironic, then, that many states have turned to medical marijuana.)
The NYTimes article goes on to say that “In Washington, some dispensaries might be well run, others poorly, but without oversight, state officials could not determine which was which. So a clean sweep – killing off the old system so that a new one could emerge – was seen as the only way forward, legislators say.”
It is in Colorado that marijuana legalization advocates should turn to as a working model blueprint. A clean sweep of the old system to make way for the new is the best way for states to bring legalization forward that would be to the benefit of all adult marijuana consumers.
What is needed is the same licensing, regulatory policies that prohibit underage sales, but provide a strong consumer protection framework for all future adult marijuana – very much like we do for alcoholic beverages.
And, under no circumstance should adult marijuana consumers suffer the stigmatism of being licensed for marijuana use.
My driver’s license works just fine for my alcohol purchases and it will work just fine for adults purchasing marijuana.
~Vidda Crochetta
Comparison with a different, smoother path for retail marijuana
A medical marijuana user will of course certainly be able to enter a shop and buy marijuana, just like any other adult, once the new stores are open in June, but the old system of medical advice and supply, however flawed or beloved, is over, say both critics and supporters of the new rules.
“Prepare for the end,” said Hilary Bricken, a lawyer in Seattle who works mostly with the marijuana industry, summarizing the advice she is giving her medical marijuana dispensary clients.
Washington State’s struggles – and the inevitable comparison with Colorado’s different, smoother path toward retail marijuana – are being watched around the nation, Ms. Bricken and other legal experts said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/us/medical-marijuana-providers-fear-effects-of-wider-legalization.html?hp
Their own worst enemies? Hardly.
You offer no proof of your thesis, you simply state that it’s self-evident that providing medical marijuana sets back legalization.
Then you actually contradict yourself by looking to Colorado, which had a well-established medical marijuana industry, which was then able to quickly serve the public. It should be noted that cities and towns were given an opt-out option. Boulder, the second-largest city in that state, does not allow for retail sales, and some towns were so overrun with dispensaries prior to legalization that they voted dispensaries out of their town despite being serious outspent (somewhere to the order of ten-to-one) in advertising leading up to the election. (Patients in these towns could still use their meds in private; I’m not completely sure that you are allowed to use or keep marijuana in your private residence in Boulder, but it’s reasonable to think that state law would allow someone to go make an out-of-town purchase without having to worry about the local fuzz busting you at the town line.) The major difference between Colorado and Washington is the former had the terms well-defined and quite reasonable, and had anticipated most if not all of the ramifications. (I don’t think you need an in-state license to purchase, and there has been some concern about out-of-state purchasers taking the product into a prohibition state but it’s not become the level of problem as it became in the Netherlands, which now requires you to show your national ID card to purchase marijuana–but oddly enough, doesn’t require the same to partake in their sex worker industry.)
You may have met _one_ person who did not care about the insane and morally bankrupt war on drugs; well, rest assured, that one represents a small minority within the medical marijuana patient community. In fact, across the nation, there is now a majority of the republic as a whole who don’t see the point of keeping marijuana illegal, and at least one Vermont state senator has floated legalization. I expect it to come to a vote and pass by 2016 or 2017 at the latest, mostly due to a wait-and-see approach to Colorado.
So let’s talk about Colorado, since your thesis is based on the sentiments of one person you “know” and is in general oxymoronic, undercutting itself a few paragraphs in.
In the run-up to 1 January 2014, when retail sales began, there was talk on the AP wire of oversupply. By 8 January (Elvis’ birthday), prices had doubled. This was a more than a bit of a shock to the medical marijuana community, which quickly formed a petition with 12500 signatures asking the legislature to give them a price-control exception as their use was medicinal and not recreational–and with sharp price swings like that, one can hardly blame them. I don’t know what became of that issue since I first read about it, probably sometime in early February.
It’s over two months of retail sales and Colorado isn’t experiencing anything but heavy video game use, a funny story about a Girl Scout setting up shop outside of a dispensary and setting a record for cookie sales in a day, and not-immoderate tax revenue. If such revenues were not sent straight to the state but a healthy cut going to the town, it’s likely Brattleboro could do a lot worse and could go without the options tax (which the state takes a cut of anyway).
I’m in total agreement with you that the war on weed is stupid, immoral and has created a “gulag”, and would go a step further and say the four-decade old war on drugs has been a complete fiasco. We need another path to deal with the tragic heroin problem that exists throughout the state–the NY Times recently had an article on Bennington’s heroin problem, probably the first time they’ve mentioned the town since the summer of 1982–and ever since marijuana decriminalization I’ve noticed that smack is smack in the middle of nearly every Reformer police log, which helps prove the point that decriminalization has forced law enforcement to concentrate its resources on bigger, more tangible problems.
I further agree that the major impediment to legalization is a lack of moral fiber within the legislative branch, particularly at the federal level; however, Colorado’s example sets a healthy standard that other states such as ours could apply ourselves to. So we need to keep a federal executive in office who has the sense to tell the DoJ to stand down (recall the raids on LA medical marijuana dispensaries?) and get the ball rolling on the state level as the issue will never be adequately address at the federal level in the next decade.
I would argue that using medical marijuana to soften up public opinion was, in retrospect, a spectacular success in getting CO & WA to go rogue and defy the federal government and its hundreds of law enforcement agencies (for this issue, the DoJ, DEA and FBI would be front-and-center even though only major criminal organizations would be under the purview of the FBI). How it set back the cause, you need to re-think and re-articulate, because your first pass was a train wreck of an argument.
As I stated my case, so it stands
Whenever I write an oped, I do, in fact, express my opinion on the matter. Self-evident or factual or not, I can say here that I have hands on and anecdotal experience dating back from 1989 to the present. Included is that I cofounded two nonprofit drug awareness organizations, including Vermont’s own past operational “Marijuana Resolve, Inc.” We were active from March 2010 to November 2012 and we think we made some contribution to public awareness and changing of marijuana laws in this state.
My Lincolnesque House Divided analogy is clearly established. If the long term view is to establish lawful consumption of marijuana by adults, the medical aspects are only important in the larger view, similar to “medical alcohol.” Instead we “divided activists” spent huge resources and wasted time to jump on the medical marijuana bandwagon that would have been better spent to legalize marijuana for all adult consumption. If anyone wanted to use it for medicine, that’s fine, but to do so at the expense of nonmedical marijuana consumers is unjustified.
If you’re trying to say that medical marijuana people had the higher ground in caring “about the insane and morally bankrupt war on drugs,” and, that I was influenced in my thinking by one person, you are misquoting and mis-paraphrasing me. Over the years, my involvement with other Americans on marijuana issues is extensive.
I certainly wouldn’t form an opinion based on “one person.” So you can dispense with the hullabaloo about your allegations that my “thesis is based on the sentiments of one person you “know” and is in general oxymoronic.” You’re barking up the wrong tree
The pricing jump you mention is going to happen anyway in an open market, and like water it will eventually seek different levels according to consumer flow. When we have market values of supply and demand established behind fiscal analyses, state by state, we might see better pricing without imposing price controls.
The current, as you call it, “tragic heroin problem” is a dynamic of the push down pop up effect.
With media, political and police attention turned from lawful marijuana, they all need another attention-getter to justify the drug-war. The only thing “tragic” about the so-called heroin problem is that it is stigmatized by its “illegal” status.
It’s a case of where criminalization is brought into play “before the fact, not after the fact.” It perpetuates that notion that heroin use, in and of itself, is a crime, but in fact, until a “real crime” is committed, it is a potential medical issue only, not criminal. It is and remains the “illegality” of it that is the problem, not the drug or the people who use it.
The lack of moral fiber I mentioned is equally shared by the state and federal legislators, Colorado, notwithstanding. However, as I’ve said, Colorado is a good standard blueprint to look to.
I never said that medical marijuana hindrance as employed was a total loss, but I wouldn’t call the mishmash of laws in 17 states a “spectacular success” either.
While you may not be alone in your assessment of my first pass argument, neither would I know if you represent the majority dissent of my opinion.
If standing on quicksand is the alpha and omega
you “win”.
Trivialzing the opiate and heroin issue with a wildly ambiguous turn of phrase is to trivialize both tragedy and death. My juxtaposition of
“tragedy” and “heroin” is by no means novel, as any competent Google search will declare. The only reason I’m replying is due to the two semi-literate noxious sentiments supplied by the asinine reply, and the trivialization is the first and foremost noxious.
The lame attempt to be “Lincoln-esque”–AGAIN–undermines the original, backwash thesis.
When Lincoln spoke of a house divided, in the same breath he stated it could not stand.
The chastisement of those who understand the reality of local, regional and national politics is unnecessarily divisive, and does not qualify as a house divided. The argument, as given, is that a split between pro-medical and pro-legal set back the pro-legal agenda. There is still no rationale supplied to support such nonsense, and the “hullaboo” is not knowing a difference of degree from a difference of polarity.
peas
so fucking out
Your words says more about you than it does about me
After years of discussing this with many people, I imagine you’re either a “patient” yourself or a “lobbyist” or both.
Even if you aren’t, your churlish behavior says more about you than it does about me.
Since this is merely a one-on-one discussion, there are no winners.
Whatever audience there is out there tuning into this “debate” is silent.
I am far more interested in them than I am in you.
right back atcha
_My_ “behavior”? Find a mirror and then call the kettle black.
I’ll never be lobbyist tyvm; I will never work for the war machine either. I was reared by the counter-culture, so my mother would disown me for being part of either.
“Whatever audience”? Read counts don’t register to you, but this site does announce them (inappropriately, not differentiating between the several reads required to posts between unique IP addresses).
As far as mutual interest, snark away, I’m speaking to the silent witnesses.
You still refuse to address the major points of my rebuttal. Let’s trim to the one:
The false equivalency of “Lincoln-esque” rhetoric still stands, and you think it’s a badge of honor and not a cone-shaped hat you need to wear in the corner of the classroom for a solid twenty minutes.
iBrattleboro.com does bring out the dimwits, especially the preferred members of The iBrattleboro Circle Jerk. Get your rocks off my web.
It'll play out in the legislatures
I didn’t see you offering a rebuttal, so much as it was a personal attack.
At least we are addressing the same audience.
This drama, however, will play out in the legislatures, not on this page.
you couldn't see a rebuttal ?!?
in my first response?!? I submitted more substance that you STILL refuse to acknowledge in that one post than crosses your “mind” in past year. See only what you want to see much?
And you’re the fool who began the personal attacks.
READ.
We are _not_ in agreement. Your central thesis was that MM impeded efforts towards legalization, and you backed it up with scant evidence. I refuse to accept that characterization, and you undercut your own argument a few paragraphs in.
Your claim to “Lincoln-esque” “House Divided” rhetoric is a false analogy.
READ.
There, thanks for having me repeat those sentiments since you are clearly a lazy reader with a narrow filter. The True Spirit of Windham County: drools of stupidity foaming out of your fingers and onto the web.
And write at an eighth-grade level. There’s an enormous difference between
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oped
and
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/op-ed?show=0&t=1394476175
lol !! Into the depths of the iBrattleboro.com “collective”
“There, thanks for having me repeat those sentiments since you are clearly a lazy reader with a narrow filter. The True Spirit of Windham County: drools of stupidity foaming out of your fingers and onto the web.” ~HM
Honestly, I’m not trying to be disrespectful here because I think you’re serious. But I’m probably not alone in seeing some humor in your quote above…
Anyhow, thank you. This article was about to drop off the front page queue into the depths of the iBrattleboro.com archived “collective.”
You revived it. Thanks a lot.
That is to say, Thanks Holland
That is to say, Thanks Holland.
anytime
Always glad to add vitriol to issues I give a damn about.
The bigger issue–and the point of agreement between us, despite my deep distaste for your central thesis–is the despicable war on drugs, and if we keep it on the virtual front page, there’s a win there somewhere.
Yes, the “drools” quote is meant to be taken as an “insult comic” comment (Don Rickles is the master–run don’t walk to Hulu or elsewhere and watch “Mr. Warmth”, a 2010? biography that’s a well-done bio as well as chock full of great jokes [http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CEkQtwIwAw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hulu.com%2Fwatch%2F55113&ei=ZC4eU-qDFo7qkAei9oHwAg&usg=AFQjCNEG9VbkQjAQYh9zbMGyLU-aC4x1Ew&sig2=oeLWWWI61T3GQXDK-96S0w&bvm=bv.62578216,d.eW0] –and lesser comedians like Dangerfield and Triumph). It’s both funny and true, so yes I am serious but cast my sentiment comedically.
I got the phrase published a bit over a year ago in Potter’s “The Commons” regarding the candidacy of the reactionary-of-the-moment Selectboard member (who naturally garnered more votes than all other candidates in 2013), and was surprised to see made into print. While typing it I realized I was not writing an opinion article but a screed. I sent it anyway.
The specious response clearly indicated that my words were more effective than a right hook to his glass jaw–and he refused to come to the phone, sent his wife to do his dirty work, and she did it poorly. It’s unfortunate that my replies did not make it to print, probably due to timing, but it still lives on at
http://www.commonsnews.org/site/site05/story.php?articleno=7017&page=1
(six or so paragraphs in)
and a golden girl took exception with the wordplay, which I refuted at
http://www.commonsnews.org/site/site05/story.php?articleno=7043&page=1
I first heard the phrase from Jim Moffit (Moffitt?), a more-than-decent drummer who hung out around my college in the 1980s. Last I heard (1995) he was living in Manhattan, married one of my predecessors as House Chair of Booth House, and had a then-three-year-old boy named Damien who loved to mosh to Helmet.
(Hey, Chris, what’s up with the spell-checker? “comedically” is how it’s spelled [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comedically] but the iBrattleboro system says no; it’s also red wavy-underlines iBrattleboro. Kindly add those two terms to the spell-checker’s vocabulary.)