The Politics of Pot!

How did it all start?

Why is marijuana banned? The real reason is worse than you think

Long ago Pot was a roadside weed that wasn't hurting anyone. And then! it was THE DEVIL'S WEED!

Across the world, more and more people are asking: Why is marijuana banned? Why are people still sent to prison for using or selling it?

This article was originally published by The Influence, a news site that covers the full spectrum of human relationships with drugs. Follow The Influence on Facebook or Twitter.

Most of us assume it’s because someone, somewhere sat down with the scientific evidence, and figured out that cannabis is more harmful than other drugs we use all the time—like alcohol and cigarettes.

Somebody worked it all out, in our best interest.

But when I started to go through the official archives—researching my book Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs—to find out why cannabis was banned back in the 1930s, I discovered that’s not what happened.

Not at all.

In 1929, a man called Harry Anslinger was put in charge of the Department of Prohibition in Washington DC. But alcohol prohibition had been a disaster. Gangsters had taken over whole neighborhoods. Alcohol—controlled by criminals—had become even more poisonous.

So alcohol prohibition finally ended–and Harry Anslinger was afraid. He found himself in charge of a huge government department, with nothing for it to do. Up until then, he had said that cannabis was not a problem. It doesn’t harm people, he explained, and “there is no more absurd fallacy” than the idea it makes people violent.

But then—suddenly, when his department needed a new purpose—he announced he had changed his mind.

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Yep, Marijuana was a creation of a Government Bureaucracy trying to justify it's existence after having failed miserably controlling the Demon Rum!.

Reefer Madness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATAd4YUBrAE

Especially like where pot make women wanton. I fucking wish!

Oh yea and 'legalization' is really turning out to be 'monopolization' as hard as I've ever seen any industry ever go in state after state.

AK seems to be the ONLY state so far that has anything even remotely close to resembling a normally regulated market. You meets environmental/safety regs, pay your taxes and good luck to you!

Every other state....100,000 dollar licencing in CO. Super limited licencing and bat shit taxation/regulation in WA now a ban on growing your own? LOL what a bunch of pricks and Ohio? SHAMLESS crony fucks tried to put the entire states cannabis market into 10 pockets. 10 rich guys literally tried to point blank buy the states market from the legislature.

Why we aren't treating pot farmers like wineries and micro brews instead of level 9,001 deadly super death blossom diseases from outer space research labs just boggles my fucking mind. It's a god damn flower that's less toxic than coffee for fucks sake...there is no reason to treat it any different than a fuckin' tomato.

Want 18 and up ? Fine....commercial ops need to follow standard safety and environmental regs? No problem.

But money has everyone straight up losing their fucking minds.

Now California is finally regulating. 13 agencies +a state and county review council that can just nay say because reasons.


13 agencies and 2 boards of mystery nay sayers to regulate? What the mother fuck California....I have a sneaking suspicion CA ain't regulating SHIT with that bureaucratic abomination LOL Why not just ban the shit again? Might as well lol

God I hope so anyhow....otherwise my worm/compost yard, and several hundred other businesses are done for. Nazi fucking pricks in Sacramento....always thinking about themselves and their bazillionaire buddies in LA/SF and fuck everyone else.

If I don't get into the cool kids club fuck California, if I am allowed to be in the cool guys club then I'll stay and get rich as fuck, that's all there is to it........I'm going to get a sandwich, shits pissing me off just thinking about it.

Bill Maher lights one up during impassioned ‘New Rules’ advocating national pot legalization

Real Time host Bill Maher took his support for the legalization of marijuana around the US to new highs on Friday, lighting up a joint to make his point.

“It’s not a tenable situation” he said of the drug’s limited legality. “When I leave Colorado, Oregon, Washington or Alaska, my back pain doesn’t go away. Or whatever it is I have. I’m kidding — I use medical marijuana because my third eye has glaucoma.”

Maher asked fellow pot lovers to “get your heads out of your grass” and realize that progress on social issues is not a given.

“Somehow, you can drink drink alcohol. You can smoke cigarettes,” he noted. “You can do that thing where you cut off your oxygen with a belt and masturbate. Which is not only dangerous, but take it from me, it’ll get you kicked out of Macy’s menwear like that.”

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If Hillary cares about excessive incarceration, then why isn't she advocating for pot legalization? If Bill can marinate cigars, why can't folks forget the Dark Lords with dope?

JackLuis said:

If Hillary cares about excessive incarceration, then why isn't she advocating for pot legalization? If Bill can marinate cigars, why can't folks forget the Dark Lords with dope?

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Because she doesn't really care about excessive incarceration.

They are long time fans of excessive incarceration.

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/13/the...ime_politics_built_the_worlds_largest_prison/


Hillary is a fucking Republican....

JackLuis said:

Bill Maher lights one up during impassioned ‘New Rules’ advocating national pot legalization



If Hillary cares about excessive incarceration, then why isn't she advocating for pot legalization? If Bill can marinate cigars, why can't folks forget the Dark Lords with dope?

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You can have illegal pot and avoid excessive incarceration. No one in Canada has ever gone to jail for a joint. Pot is illegal in Canada. Always has been. Politicos and judges just need to be more circumspect in sentencing guidelines. Fines and community service work well for small timers.

I like community sentences, sort of a public shaming thing. Like being sentenced to the stocks in the marketyard for a couple of days. Put them in orange jumpers and have them clean highway verges. Potheads! Who cares if they run. As long as it is not across the 401 during a bust period.

Hard_Rom said:

You can have illegal pot and avoid excessive incarceration. No one in Canada has ever gone to jail for a joint. Pot is illegal in Canada. Always has been. Politicos and judges just need to be more circumspect in sentencing guidelines. Fines and community service work well for small timers

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Or maybe only since 1923, about the time it was being made illegal in the US.

The 10 Most Marijuana-Friendly States in the USA

Which are the marijuana-friendliest states in the nation? Where would a pot person want to buy a home and settle down?

The online national real estate search site Estately has taken a crack at answering those burning questions. The site's blog's Ultimate Lists cranks out all sorts of creative comparative data—cities with the most romantic homes for sale, states with the most pizza—and now it's done the same with weed.

To measure marijuana-friendliness, Estately looked at the number of marijuana users, the price of pot (both high and low quality), and the legal status of marijuana (legal, decriminalized, medical). It also looked to the web and social media, measuring cannabis-related Google searches and using Facebook user data on interest on pot-themed publications. Estately used a 100-point scale to weigh each state on each of the five categories to arrive at its rankings.

The West and New England are the regions with the most marijuana enthusiasm, although Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming form a conservative Great Basin counterweight to the Pacific Coast states and the Southwest. Estately's top 10 "marijuana-enthused" states follow just below the map.

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There's no real mystery to it...it's all about taxes.

Since just about any swinging Dick or Jane with a couple of pots and some halide lights (for those who get minimal sunshine like western washington) can grow the shit, until they come up with a viable tax scheme it will remain illegal.

Some states being the exception of course..

mark_j said:

There's no real mystery to it...it's all about taxes.

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No it's not. Taxes are an issue for the handful of states who have given federal supremacy loving Republicans and their DEA/private prison funding the fuckin' finger.

For the rest of them it's all about (R) getting GOOD (like big pharma good) funding for locking up every stoner they can find. And with prison population 800% what it was when St.Reagan started his mandatory minimums to support Nixons war on drugs it's no wonder (R)'s wont even address the topic with anything other than "Federal laws should be enforced !!"

Their welfare depends on it.

50% of the price of pot is pure profit and based on risk of getting caught. You can always double your money if you buy in any sort of quantity. That allows for quite a tax to be assessed and still allow a good profit to be made.

Hard_Rom said:

50% of the price of pot is pure profit and based on risk of getting caught. You can always double your money if you buy in any sort of quantity. That allows for quite a tax to be assessed and still allow a good profit to be made.

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Rom you ignorant putz.....lol 50% my ass. That's the most arbitrarty bullshit I've ever seen thrown out there except maybe the claim that skunk is special crack weed that vindicates Reefer Madness.

And no it doesn't, not if you want to take from the black market.

Just ask WA/CO how quick they came up off that save the universe tax on weed when they realized they weren't taking a penny away from the black market at the insane prices they were asking.

Lets ask a poll from our readers?
What is the Price of Pot in:

1 Seattle, price for mid-good grade swage.
2, Seattle price for "Whowy one hit Wonder."

3 Denver/Boulder for Swage.
4. Denver/Boulder "WOHW"


5. Portland for Swage.
6. Portland for "WOHW"

7. LA/SF for Swage.
8. LA/SF for "WOHW"

The article listed ratings but no $$$ per ounce/25 grams (just to make the math easier)

28 grams in an ounce. 7 grams a quarter

per oz
150$ for outdoor and standard hydro. 50 a quarter. 10 a gram. profiteers can charge 70 and 15
250 for wheelchair. 70 a quarter

much better profit margin for low grade stuff

cheap homegrown and shake made into oil at 300 per pound (small margarine tub) can be sold at 20 per gram

320-380 for top shelf indo in SF/Portland/LA

400-450/oz for exotics.

I haven't done a lot of shopping in Seattle but I can't imagine it being too far off.

Outdoor is 180-240 an O.

Fuck me Jesus, with a sharp stick!

Who could cough up that kind of dough for dope? For less than $500 bucks you can grow in a closet and run a crop every three weeks!

What has happened to good old American ingenuity? No wonder hydro stores in my area are on almost every corner?

JackLuis said:

Fuck me Jesus, with a sharp stick!

Who could cough up that kind of dough for dope?

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The same kinda people who pay 8$ for a gallon of milk and 5k/month for a 700sqft 1/1 without parking.

Young fresh out of school Dot com fuckers.

JackLuis said:

For less than $500 bucks you can grow in a closet and run a crop every three weeks!

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For 322$ you can grow a 10lb tree. If you're doing 50 of them Cost goes up a couple bones if you only do a few but not by a whole lot.

JackLuis said:

What has happened to good old American ingenuity? No wonder hydro stores in my area are on almost every corner?

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People are lazy and they want instant gratification in a bottle. If it's got cool graphics or tits on the label it even better. People buy it up! I've thought about opening one just because so much money, but the scene here has shit pretty saturated with those places and retail isn't really my scene.

I just use properly prepared compost, top shelf all the time every time from pretty much any plant you want. Roses, squash, ganja, strawberries, bonsai, fruit trees, crazy time cactus....everything does awesome with a good compost. Some like just a little others like a lot but they all like it. Best part is if you're not lazy it can be made for free in most cases and you can make it happen significantly faster for just a few bucks worth of sugar. If you live in the city you might have to travel to collect materials and get a water filter to get the shit out of the water that will fuck up all the microbes you need to break your pile of shit down. But still a hell of a lot cheaper than those jugs.

Not likely to go to jail for simple possession. Cultivating maybe though. Folk still buy beer and wine even though homebrew kits are available.

Perhaps if they legalize it, growing your own will drive the prices down.

At those prices no wonder the tax freaks are worried about their skim.

Did home brew beer kits drive down the price of beer? Does homemade hard cider cut into wine sales? As soon as it does the commercial growers will have ads on the telly extorting their brands to the mindless mob.

I even get home delivery. No watering, no smell, no fertilizers. One phone call and a couple hours later delivered to my door. I don't bother buying grams. That's a waste of my money and his gas.

JackLuis said:

Perhaps if they legalize it, growing your own will drive the prices down.

At those prices no wonder the tax freaks are worried about their skim.

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Washington tried banning growing your own because of that.


What they didn't realize is that people weren't growing their own, they were buying CA weed.

So they came up off those save the universe taxes.

The tax freaks are worried about their skim because everyone thinks you can just stick a plant anywhere in the ground and you'll get 15lbs of top shelf out of it. LOL They think like Rom 50% of the price is pure profit the state has every right to snatch up.

The farmer who spends 9 months kissing that plants ass 10 hrs a day knows better and ain't doing all that work to make the state rich while he gets so little he can't even cover the cost of production. Fuck the state and fuck the consumer with that noise...take it to FL and get 6k/lb.

CA is about to blow their medical cannabis up....they made the process of production so lengthy and overly complex (13 agencies and 2 boards of approval) and you have to test but you have to pay these 'transporters' that they willed into existence to do it for you + an extra testing tax etc etc.

It's pure insanity and the regs to make sure only rich people with good connections can afford to do this are piled on thick. I can only hope this bites them in the ass and they wind up not regulating shit.

Watch, I'm betting in 10 years no more than 8 companies are going to own CA's entire cannabis industry.

Progressive my ass.....no one hates poor people as much and wants to keep them down more than CA. Except maybe NY.

Why Marijuana Businesses Still Can’t Get Bank Accounts

All that sweet sweet Pot Money needs a place to rest.

DENVER — Tim Cullen’s marijuana business brought in millions of dollars last year, but he’s had a hard time finding a bank to take the money. He’s cycled through 14 checking accounts in six years. Recently, he said, a bank shut down all his personal accounts, including college savings for his 3-year-old son.

Federal law prohibits banks and credit unions from taking marijuana money. So here in Colorado, everyone involved with the state’s legal cannabis industry has a banking problem. Businesses can’t get loans, customers have to pay in cash, and state tax collectors are processing bags of bills.

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People should move to Spain. :





" article 36.18 :

In Spain, growing cannabis is essentially an activity which can only be penalized criminally if it is carried out for the purpose of trafficking, thus excluding growing cannabis for personal use.

There is one restriction, and that is you still can’t openly grow in a place that is viewable from a public space.

Grow shops and registered growers can sell cuttings/seedlings provided they do not display them openly to the public."

Aella_ said:

People should move to Spain. :

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Or we could all just tell our own government to pull the stick out of it's ass.

Libertarian Gary Johnson predicts Obama will reclassify marijuana before leaving the White House

Former New Mexico Gov. and 2016 Libertarian White House hopeful Gary Johnson says he thinks President Obama is going to remove marijuana from the government's "Schedule I" list of narcotics considered particularly harmful and addictive on his way out of office.

"It's going to be just like alcohol," Mr. Johnson told The Washington Times Tuesday. "I'm going to predict that Obama, when he leaves office, is going to deschedule marijuana as a Class I narcotic. I wish he would have done that to this point, but I think he's going to do that going out the door. That's a positive."

Marijuana is currently on the Schedule I list alongside drugs like LSD and heroin. The Drug Enforcement Agency defines Class I drugs as having a high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, among others, has suggested reclassifying the drug under Schedule or Class II. Those drugs include cocaine, but also certain painkillers like oxycodone that are available with a medical prescription.

Mr. Johnson's campaign followed up by saying that the former governor would prefer that the president remove marijuana from the controlled substances list entirely, allowing states to legalize and regulate as they and their voters choose.

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That is probably too liberal for our pussy President. He wouldn't want to get controversial as he's leaving.