California Leading the Way?

[Dipole]

California's budget impasse has passed the one-month mark, social services aren't getting state-funded help they need to stay open, and other legislative priorities are being put off the table until the legislature can come to agreement.

One California resident thinks he has the answer: Legalize the growth and sales of marijuana.

Clifford Schaffer, who runs a marijuana advocacy Web site in his spare time from his day job as a computer programmer, says that California could easily clear up the $700 million budget gap still facing state lawmakers, and as a plus, the measure could even help improve national security. He has started a petition, and the number of those supporting his idea is growing rapidly.

"We would honestly hope that they take our suggestion. Failing that, you know, what are the options?" Schaffer said in a telephone interview from his Agua Dulce, Calif., home. Otherwise, he said, "They're going to send another few billion to the drug lords in Mexico who are challenging the Mexican government."

Citing a study that estimates gross U.S. spending on marijuana at roughly $10 billion a year, he said California could corner the market on taxes gleaned from a legalized marijuana trade, generating $1 billion in revenues. That money would stay within the state instead of going to foreign drug cartels.

Now that's what I'm talking about.

[Beastmaster]

Pretty much anyone growing the herb now will be put out of business once cultivation is legalized. Places such as Humboldt County and other members of the Emerald Triangle will be severely affected as the monetary input via the 'black market' (or is it grey?) is pretty much the only major industry left up here, even if it is underground.

Corporate agriculture is gonna capitalize on that for sure. Why wouldn't they? Cannabis will flourish wherever corn grows, Central Cali is gonna flip flop from corn and tomatoes to cannabis. Or at least make some room for it. Shit those farmers thought they had it bad with the crows...

Still though, it might be nice to be able to pick up a bushel of organic cannabis at the local farmer's market...

[bugs]

Hell, I'd support my local weed farmer! As if I don't now.

That idea's just too damned rational for the turdbreaths who want to keep it a crime. Just think, nationally that's ten bilbucks that wouldn't go into the law enforcement and incarceration industries' coffers. Not to mention all the stolen -uh, confiscated- property.

[Cafro]

I would love to see it legalized out there,,,, conservativist bastards telling us we cant smoke is bolognia.

I was fairly certain that it was already legal with a medical marijuana card. But the underlying problem still would seem to be that the feds dont accept the state law and federal law out weighs state law.

But im thinking that if somone has a problem and they call the police then they would be enforcing state law which says that its legal,,,,,with their county limits......the federal convernment needs to use this to their advantage...imo and in turn we get what we want....legalized cannabis.....complete legal trade this way Somone can grow and cash in on their crop.....worryfree


ARRRRRRRR

[Dipole]

The problem at federal will still be there.

[oibchip]

Originally Posted by Dipole

The problem at federal will still be there.

Exactly....medical marijuana is already legal in many states..but the feds can still get ya. Too much money for the p[harm companies and alcohol industry would be lost if marijuana was legalized on the fed level. Their lobbyist are hard at work keepin the MJ down!

[Set]

Originally Posted by Beastmaster

Cannabis will flourish wherever corn grows, Central Cali is gonna flip flop from corn and tomatoes to cannabis.

AND it's more efficient for making fuel than corn.

Seriously, corn was just a (stupid idea) / (politic move) in the first place.

A few years ago, Mendocino county in Northern california passed "with flying colors" messure G legalizing personal use of cannabis legalizing possesion of up to 2 lbs and having up to 25 flowering female plants at any givin time. But the sherrif and DA swear on oath to uphold state law, so it was kinda more like a poll than an expression of democracy at work.

However the da made public statements in the local paper saying they didn't want to see anyone in the court house for less than 100 plants

[fattyz]

I told the governor, supposedly a devout mormon and now potential president, that since he was already running the state on a gambling racket, which would have had him up on federal charges 40/50 years ago, why not just legalize dope and whores also, the state can live on that, and those of us who choose not to "indulge" won't have to pay any taxes.

What a country

FattyZ

[TVCasualty]

Originally Posted by Beastmaster

Pretty much anyone growing the herb now will be put out of business once cultivation is legalized. Places such as Humboldt County and other members of the Emerald Triangle will be severely affected as the monetary input via the 'black market' (or is it grey?) is pretty much the only major industry left up here, even if it is underground.

Corporate agriculture is gonna capitalize on that for sure. Why wouldn't they? Cannabis will flourish wherever corn grows, Central Cali is gonna flip flop from corn and tomatoes to cannabis. Or at least make some room for it. Shit those farmers thought they had it bad with the crows...

Still though, it might be nice to be able to pick up a bushel of organic cannabis at the local farmer's market...

When I was in Amsterdam, I noticed that the prices weren't any lower thanks to it being decriminalized. If taxed, expect the gov to end up charging about what we are paying now, or more (somewhere around $100 a quarter ounce).

I would also expect the bud sold in gov shops to be of relatively poor quality due to handling, packaging, and shipping, regardless of the strain they are actually growing (it won't be fresh, or cured right, and probably on it's way to becoming a brick).

So, I expect the underground growers to keep right on growing. Currently, they sell to medical users or connoisseurs for the most part, and those people will not put up with what the gov would try to sell. The masses who tolerate dirt weed will be thrilled however, so the smuggling rings bringing large loads across the borders would be hardest hit, I think. I'm sure the gov would quickly realize it needed to offer a schwag option at the weed store, something you could get for $50/ quarter but has 5% THC.

Somehow, most people just don't understand that buying a quarter of high-quality herb for $100 that lasts three times as long as a $50 quarter of schwag is a better deal for the buyer (on every level). Which kind of dealer would we expect the government to be?

[fattyz]

I don't know that the government would grow particularly, they would probably "allow" private firms to grow via "contracts" (aka payoffs) This should deal with the quality issue though, its obvious you can charge more for better quality anything, higher prices = more taxes = bigger government and everyone wins.....everyone but us, that is.

[Beastmaster]

Those are some good points about the shortcomings of large scale production, I wonder if the same will hold true for large agricultural corporations.

Didn't the G-13 strain of cannabis come from a government run greenhouse/grow operation? Not to many shortcuts evident there...

[suckerfree]

Even though it's decriminalized in Holland (still illegal just tolerated) doesn't remove the criminal element.

The 'coffeeshops' in amsterdamn are allowed to sell weed, but they can only hold limited supplies set by the government.
(the government doesn't grow it, they just tax it)
Here's the kicker-

the suppliers of weed are still illegal. meaning whoever sells the coffeeshop weed is breaking the law, though usually never investigated, it's illegal and growers still get in trouble.
since it is illegal, you'll find mafia just like anywhere else.



netherland drug laws are kinda tricky.

Don't you guys think if it were legalized, instead of goverment grows shops and taxes, people would just grow it??

If it is legalized, it will have to be on a federal level, so that wouldn't make california any kind of mecca for people looking for some US amsterdam, if all of Europe legalized it Amsterdam would have to lowere its prices considerably.

If it were legal, here few people would go shopping for it. If you didn't grow your own for whatever reason, and one of the plethera of people in your community who did grow it wouldn't hook you up, at thevery least you could buy a 5lb bag of dank trim that would last an eternity or turn into a 1/2lb of killer hash, and what would that cost if every one was growing?

In the "Emerald Triangle" Street prices are low, and good shake and trim are plentiful enough that people often give it out, if it were legal everywhere, the Emerald triangle would have no market nor would anywhere else, it would be free.

[quote=suckerfree;417884]Even though it's decriminalized in Holland (still illegal just tolerated) doesn't remove the criminal element.
quote]

People from all over go there to party and rage, to do things they aren't allowed to in there country. When they get there they see thousands of other people loking to debaucherize.

In order to remove the criminal element, it has to be legalized all over the place, or at least in several places.

[SharkieJones]

If it were grown by the commercial farmer I wonder if it would be like tobacco where you never ever see a seed. I don't think I've ever seen a tobacco seed.

Well I grow midwiveian tobacco, I got the seeds off the net, now I collect them from the plant.

Right now cannabis seed banks are all over, If we had legalized 15 years ago, you'd never see a single seed of dank, except from the key places like California and kentucky where people have been growing since the 60's and 70's. One reason they wont legalize is because it cant be controlled by the farmers and market, everyone would grow there own. Its a high yeilding plant even after manicuring and drying, and when you consider that the chaff on this plant can be turned into hash, even biger yeild.

[Beastmaster]

I wonder if it would be like tobacco where you never ever see a seed. I don't think I've ever seen a tobacco seed.

That's because the final product of tobacco is the leaf, and perhaps also due to the tiny size of tobacco seeds (same size as poppy seeds). Tobacco flowers are at the top of the stalk, and are easy to separate from the leaves. Commercially, the plants are probably harvested before they ever even start to flower.

Not so for cannabis, as I'm sure you know...

[TVCasualty]

Good point in comparing to tobacco... The other issue is that tobacco sold in cigarettes has gone through a machine that mashes up all the leaves and twigs and whatever else happens to be in the bundle to give a homogenous product. That keeps all cigs like all others.

So imagine a company "harvesting" a pot plant by tossing it (all of it except the root ball) into a machine that grinds it to pulp, flash-dries it, then auto-rolls joints by the thousand. Then it goes into packs with cleverly designed packaging "Fatty'z" and "Fatty'z Lights" gets put on a truck, parked in the sun, sat on a shelf, and eventually bought and smoked (cough, cough). That's what corporate pot will be like.

G13 was processed like a mofo before the people got thier joints, but like Mexican schwag, it started out as great buds. Plus, G13 was never grown even close to the scale we're talking here.

Most people would not grow if it were legal. Most don't brew beer or make wine either, which would be much cheaper and of higher quality than storebought alcohol, and is currently legal. Most people are lazy, and have a talent for killing their houseplants, so growers will always have markets though the profits might diminish. That would be OK since the risk would as well, and medicine should be cheaper anyway!

Beer making is far more complex than planting a seed. Mushroom growing is too, but if it were legal, pf kits would be all the rage. If californis legalized spore trade, this place would be filled with shrooms.

People might not invest a bunch of money in an indo set up, or organic soil ammendments, but for pot smokers, financial gain is rarley the #1 motivating force in starting a grow, I really think a lot of people would plant a seed if it were legal, it would be hard not to, espescially if they were used to smoking machine processed weed that sat in a truck "cough cough",and it would probably spark of latent interest in gardening in them as it already does in those who do.

When I lived in the emerald triangle the kids at school grew ganja, and hardly any of them made a cent from it, its just what the community does up there, even some of the homless people. Most growers of all ages grow a few plants and end up sitting on pounds til the next harvest season,( I've smoked 13 year old bud before, I moved into a house in the woods near the humboldt mendo border and found 5 lbs of buds that was at least 5 years old, the trichomes turned red), because they dont have the buyers/conects to move it all, tourist come buy a little off the street, but most of it flows freely among the community, but unless you have outa town/state buyers you cant sell it because the local market is over flooded, and it does flow freely. If all the outa town /states legalized there would be no buyers, a pound a plant outdo' in full sun w/ plenty of water, whos gonna by shwag?

The market would be in seeds, clones, and grow supplies.

[Beastmaster]

So imagine a company "harvesting" a pot plant by tossing it (all of it except the root ball) into a machine that grinds it to pulp, flash-dries it, then auto-rolls joints by the thousand.

The cannabis mill was patented just before cannabis was criminalized in the early 20th century. Still probably isn't a very gentle process...

[reverend trips]

Don't you guys think if it were legalized, instead of goverment grows shops and taxes, people would just grow it??

How many cigarette smokers here spending an arm and a leg on smokes when they could easily grow thier own tobacco?

If corn cost $100.00 bucks an oz. I'd grow my own. I really would.


Forgive me for generalizing here, beer drinkers love to get drunk, they dont love dank beer and hate budweiser. Beer is complexed to make comparitivly and is low yeilding considering the process and beer is cheap.

Tobacco smokers dont loooooooooooooove Marlboros, there addicted to them.

And every smoker doesnt need to grow to flood the market, 1 in 10 pot smokers growing outdoor and or indoor will flood the market.

And I'm sorry but pot smokers want to grow pot, don't we? And as far as money goes, its more of a motivation to save money then to earn it and at a 100bucks a 1/4 oz. in Amsterdam, and a lb a plangt in full sun...I'm sorry but I'd grow my own, and it would be dank and I'd be happy and proud, and like the 100dollar can of corn, if I loved my corn I'd grow the shit with bat guano, I'd foliar feed with kelp, and I'd use some hopped up dutch flowering formula that cost 50bucks a bottle and my corn would free and dank and you could come over for dinner and eat for free.

I dunno what it's like in your neck of the woods but people from all over the country move to Mendocino county California just because they want to grow weed and Mendo is the safest place to do it.

People wanna grow it

[TVCasualty]

Sure, lots of people would plant seeds if it were legal. They'd toss them in their yards, along the highway, everywhere. Getting a good harvest off a plant is not slam-dunk easy, though, as many of us have discovered.

Whereas planting a seed is easier than brewing (and growing mushrooms is easier than both, once someone learns the rules), growing world-class pot indoors at medium to large scale production is much harder than brewing. There would be tons of scraggly-ass, fluffy, undercured buds around to compete with the corporate schwag, but perfectly cured, rock-hard kind buds from superior, well-chosen phenotypes will always be profitable and worthwhile to grow, just as premium microbrews still cost more even with all the options available.

The Emerald Triangle is a unique situation, and the rest of the country would not be like it at all. For one thing, it is an ideal climate to grow weed in, and for another, like you mention, it's attracted people who like to grow pot for decades, so the number and skill level of growers there is way, way higher than anywhere else in the US with the possible exception of parts of Kentucky and a particular county in Georgia.

For the rest of the country, financial gain is the reason at least half the people who grow get started, at least among growers I've met (and I've lived in many places across the country). I have even met several who don't ever smoke it themselves!

Many people these days don't have the time or patience to even keep houseplants alive, and/or they live in tiny apartments in big cities. Coincidentally, they are often the ones willing to pay top dollar for good bud because they need it to tolerate that lifestyle. A pound of the very best weed available can easily go for $8000 (no breaks!) right now in NYC. That's a healthy markup for an entrepeneur who brings in a trunkload of $1500-$2000/ lb bud from California! And if you are growing something in a place where it is essentially safe (unless you are growing an insane amount), and someone else comes and takes the risk of interstate transport, and you are still getting $1500-$2000/lb for it, I'd say the top quality stuff is holding it's value in the face of increasing production rather well.

[cheshire]

sounds like alot of u are giving reasons against growing weed, this shows that unlike normal ppl, this community (the weed smoking open minded community) can examine the pros and cons of legalizing weed, it would benefit all greatly because it wont be a crime but alot of ppl actually look past their own selfish needs and to the idea as a whole.. this is what makes this community far more intellectual than any u will come across

let us grow more

[suckerfree]

Look, it's a sad fact, but weed probably never will be federally legalized. There's just too too much money involved.

Tobacco and Alcohol spends a LOT of money lobbying against the legalization of the weed.
Lots of federal officers are employed because of weed.
Lots of property gets seized and auctioned for money.
And their favorite(most profitable) - seizing the cash of drug lords. (which if the government taxed weed, sure they'd make some money, but not the huge ammounts illegal weed generates.)
And the countless ammount of money we've already spent making sure OTHER countries change their laws...

[Dipole]

It hard to argue against money and the odds are on your side of the argument Suckerfree, but there is the human cost that is the only good counter to it. If it comes down to special interest's profits, how many more people have to be locked up for growing pot?

Also, just like alcohol was for years, pot could be legalized for sale and taxed, but still be illegal to grow your own without a license.

[oibchip]

Prison and jail are big business! Just think if all of the people who have been and will be incarcerated for MJ were freed or never locked up.

[Dipole]

A business California is have a hard time keeping afloat.

[TVCasualty]

Then again, mushrooms are a model for social change (to me) and I observe them closely to learn successful strategies for living. They teach that the majority of any culture is underground and invisible until favorable conditions arise, then a "fruiting" occurs, among other things.

With pot, every smoker and grower and supporter of personal freedom is part of that culture, and if the necessary conditions fell into place, this underground culture would suddenly 'mushroom' up out of the ground, and that is the best bet for real change. Unlikely? So were the Seattle WTO protests, and they were a great example of a culture "fruiting" in favorable conditions. They happened suddenly, were huge (taking nearly everyone else by surprise), and spread worldwide in mere days. Where were all those protesters before? Right there, and here, and everywhere, underground and invisible, awaiting favorable conditions.

Evolution happens in fits and starts, it's not a step-by-step linear thing (as the fossil and political records show) so really, no status quo is ever truly safe.

Here's more wackiness:

No scientists have yet been able to determine what the impulse is that causes massive flocks of certain kinds of birds to suddenly and simultaneously all change direction in flight. You've probably seen video of this. Tens of thousands of 'em going this way, then all of a sudden they all turn 90 degrees, then another 90 degrees, and the whole time they never bump into each other and there is no discernible cue coordinating the action. Is it a group mind? Is it a "morphogenic field?" I dunno, but it gives me a sliver of hope to see other animals, as a group, change the direction they were headed all at the same time... unified. Not just for legalizing pot, but for civilization itself to continue longer than the next few decades, this kind of thing is desperately needed within the human race.

The best bet for change is more oppression, ironically, since "A rigid imposition of order leads to an escalation of chaos." And lo and behold, we're getting just that. Seems counter-intuitive, but so is most of history, and tearing your colonized substrate apart or gouging the surface can induce a flush, so the fungal metaphor remains valid, even if it's a little odd.

As you can see, I can't separate small themes like legalizing weed with larger themes like the collapse of civilization, or the life cycle of fungi. In a fractal universe, not only is it all connected, it's all the same!

[Hippie3]

lol
like growers will line up to pay their taxes

i know i would
not.

the day after i see Uncle Sam pulling up weeds and carrying water
i'll send him his cut of the take.

[fattyz]

And one thing only. $$$$$$$$$$$$$