Forget about all of the health and legal arguments for legalizing marijuana; if ever there has been a time when we could use the cash from something to assist our economy and our country it is now. Legalize, tax and distribute the "debbil's weed" and watch your economic woes disappear. Hell, even if they don't, folks will be much more mellow about the mess we're in. Win-win! I am concerned about the impact of food shortages however. If ever the was a way in which to get a potsmoker ticked, it would be to take away his/her zoom-zooms and wham-whams....
The Grass-Roots Marijuana Wars
Lately, however, Duncan directed more energy toward his role as California director of Americans for Safe Access, a group of merchants, doctors and patients that aims to make it easier to dispense and obtain marijuana for medical purposes. The organization's central mission: fighting U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raids on dispensaries.
California is the largest of 12 states allowing marijuana for certain medical uses, but the federal government considers all marijuana illegal. The conflicting statutes have led to an uncomfortable existence for California's growing ranks of marijuana providers. "At any moment, the DEA can come kicking down the door," says Duncan.
That is just what happened on May 27 to Virgil Edward Grant III, 41, owner of six L.A.-area dispensaries. Grant and his wife Psyhra Monique Grant, 33, were charged with 41 counts, including, drug conspiracy and money laundering and aiding and abetting the distribution of marijuana near a school. Grant pleaded not guilty on June 2. An employee, Stanley Jerome Cole, 39, pleaded not guilty to charges of selling a pound of marijuana to an undercover agent from the back door of one dispensary.
Timothy J. Landrum, special agent in charge of the DEA in Los Angeles, called the suspects "nothing more than drug traffickers." Prosecutors say Cole sold marijuana to a motorist charged with gross vehicular manslaughter in connection with a December accident near Ventura, Calif. His truck hit a parked car on a highway shoulder, killing the driver and seriously injuring a California Highway Patrol officer. Police said the driver was under the influence of marijuana that he said he had purchased at a dispensary in Compton, where one of Grant's operations is located.
Even before the Grants' arrest, Duncan's group had stepped up its efforts to fight the DEA, securing letters from six California mayors to U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat from Michigan who is chair of the House Judiciary Committee, requesting that the DEA halt the raids. In an April letter, Conyers asked the DEA to explain its use of "paramilitary-s
In fact, the day the Grants were arrested, Duncan was at L.A.'s city hall with a group of protesters delivering a petition to enlist the help of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (who has not taken a position on the issue). When they learned that DEA agents were at one of Grant's dispensaries, just a few blocks away, the group quickly moved to the dispensary, surrounding its entrance while the DEA agents were still inside. The bust proceeded as Los Angeles Police Department officers stood by, but also not interfering with the peaceful rally.
Duncan has been an activist for more than a decade, starting out by helping to gather signatures for the 1996 initiative that legalized marijuana for medical purposes. At first skeptical, the Texas-born son of a physician and a nurse was moved by meeting a Berkeley schoolteacher who used marijuana to cope with the pain of glaucoma. "I thought, 'this isn't somebody wanting to get high — this is real,'" recalls Duncan. "I want to help."
Four years ago, he moved to Los Angeles, helping to open a dispensary and working to recruit activists and local politicians to the cause. Now he does that from a small office just upstairs from his four-room dispensary, which sits next to a Tattoo parlor and around the corner from a Target store. Two beefy security guards watch the door and a smiling receptionist sits next to a case displaying bongs and other paraphernalia. Inside, patients examine samples in glass cases. Some day, Duncan says, this will be as normal as visiting Walgreens. For now, he's less focused on his inventory than on his group's efforts to supply activists with "raid kits" — protest signs, bullhorns, and sunscreen — so they can show up on a moment's notice to confront DEA agents. Says Duncan: "I predict we're going to have a very long summer."
END
Marijuana Takes the Pot as Most Valuable Cash Crop in the Country
Weeding through the value of the nation's cash crops, a study released today states that marijuana is the U.S.'s most valuable crop and promotes the drug's legalization and taxation.
Drug enforcement officials say the equation is not that simple. (Ed note: only because regardless of what they tell us, the fact is that the interdiction, arrest and prosecution of potsmokers is job security for hundreds of thousands of cops, guards, parole and probation officers, prison builders and supplers, and a host of other ancillary services that support them. The war on drugs has created its own economy and power base and those folks are not going to go quietly into the night)
The report, "Marijuana Production in the United States," by marijuana policy researcher Jon Gettman, concludes that despite massive eradication efforts at the hands of the federal government, "marijuana has become a pervasive and ineradicable part of the national economy."
In the report, Gettman, a marijuana-refor
Contrasting government figures for traditional crops -- like corn and wheat -- against the study's projections for marijuana production, the report cites marijuana as the top cash crop in 12 states and among the top three cash crops in 30.
The study estimates that marijuana production, at a value of $35.8 billion, exceeds the combined value of corn ($23.3 billion) and wheat ($7.5 billion).
Pot Tax?
To activists for marijuana legalization, the study confirms a position they've held for years, and uses government stats to support their claim.
"The fact that marijuana is America's No. 1 cash crop after more than three decades of governmental eradication efforts is the clearest illustration that our present marijuana laws are a complete failure," says Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington D.C., a group that focuses on removing criminal penalties for marijuana use.
Kampia, whose comments were included in the study's press release, adds, "Our nation's laws guarantee that 100 percent of the proceeds from marijuana sales go to unregulated criminals rather than to legitimate businesses that pay taxes to support schools, police and roads."
A 2005 analysis by Harvard visiting professor Jeffrey Miron estimates that if the United States legalized marijuana, the country would save $7.7 billion in law enforcement costs and could generated as much as $6.2 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like alcohol or tobacco.
Miron's report on the costs of marijuana prohibition was signed by more than 500 leading economists, most notably the late Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, who served as an economist in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations
The Dangers of Legalization
Aside from the health debate over legalizing marijuana, Garrison Courtney, spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Agency, says groups that advocate its taxation sometimes paint too rosy a picture.
"It's still a drug," Courtney says. "Just because it's a good cash crop doesn't mean you should legalize and tax it."
"It's not these cute mom-and-pop bong shops anymore," Courtney continued. "It's violent drug-traffickin
Local marijuana growers, he says, are the tentacles of international drug-traffickin
"You can't tax a Mexican drug trafficking group," Courtney explains. "That's the side a lot of people don't focus on."
End
I'm sorry, but the "last word" on this issue should not come from someone who's entire career hinges on continuing the status quo war against marijuana users.
The fact is, allowing Americans to grow their own here in the United States would instantly eliminate the "violent drug-traffickin
Personally, as both a longtime smoker and accomplished grower of the wild weed, I've never once had a "run in" with a "violent drug-trafficking group," although I've had cops say that I was one of them myself, which just goes to show you that they have their heads up their asses when it comes to this issue.
Look, I'll repeat this until someone listens to me; the biggest harm that comes to most folks over the use of marijuana is the harm brought to them by law enforcement and the lifelong stigmatization of having a criminal record as a result of that interaction.
It is utterly ridiculous to continue wasting our precious tax dollars trying to stamp out a weed. There are much bigger, much more violent and heinous fish to fry in the world.
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