California Raking In Cash Via Legal Marijuana
As more and more states struggle with the cost of housing people in jail for smoking a joint or simple possession, hopefully, Americans and lawmakers alike look to California as shining example of how marijuana should be dealt with. First off, it was decriminalized in 1976, and in many states there are mandatory jail time for marijuana! How can America be so polar when it comes to state to state punishment for cannabis? It is far past time America change its laws regarding cannabis and use this wonderful plant to not only aid our medicinal needs, but to help raise fund to fight the problems we do have in this country!
Look at how Cali is handling things:
SAN FRANCISCO — A drug deal plays out, California-style:
A conservatively dressed courier drives a company-leased Smart Car to an apartment on a weekday afternoon. Erick Alvaro hands over a white paper bag to his 58-year-old customer, who inspects the bag to ensure that everything he ordered over the phone is there.
An eighth-ounce of organic marijuana buds for treating his seasonal allergies? Check. An eighth of a different strain for insomnia? Check. THC-infused lozenges and tea bags? Check and check, with a free herb-laced cookie thrown in as a thank-you gift.
It’s a $102 credit-card transaction carried out with the practiced efficiency of a home-delivered pizza — and with just about as much legal scrutiny.
More and more, having premium pot delivered to your door in California is not a crime. It is a legitimate business.
Since the state became the first to legalize the drug for medicinal use, the weed the federal government puts in the same category as heroin and cocaine has become a major economic force.
It is far past time America change its laws regarding cannabis and use this wonderful plant to not only aid our medicinal needs, but to help raise fund to fight the problems we do have in this country!
Based on the quantity of marijuana that authorities seized last year, the crop alone was worth an estimated $17 billion or more, dwarfing any other sector of the state’s agricultural economy.
And pot also props up local economies, mints millionaires and feeds a thriving industry of startups — stores that sell high-tech marijuana-growing equipment, pot clubs that pay rent and hire workers, chains of for-profit clinics that specialize in medical-marijuana recommendations.
Police officers need to be relieved of marijuana duty and be sent to patrol the rapes and murders that go on right under their nose while they chase a guy for a marijuana join, its pathetic excuse for justice if you ask me.
Patients and nonviolent people are thrown to the ground and treated like rapists for partaking in their own natural medicine or growing a safe and effective plant. However, real crimes continue while these police use up millions and millions of dollars to go after marijuana possession and overlook real crimes! meth use, teen pregnancy all rising rapidly, cops should stop worrying about arresting marijuana users and go do something more beneficial to society.
Still, some lawmakers are pushing for broader legalization as a way to shore up the finances of a state that has teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. The state’s top tax collector estimates that taxing marijuana like liquor could bring in more than $1.3 billion annually.
On Tuesday, Oakland will consider a measure to tax the city’s four marijuana dispensaries, which the city auditor projects will ring up $17.5 million in sales in 2010. The city faces an $83 million budget shortfall, and it expects the marijuana tax to raise $315,000.
The facts are in the numbers…
With a recent poll showing more than half of Californians supporting legalization, pot advocates believe they will prevail.
And they say other states will follow.
Tim Blake is the proprietor of a 145-acre spiritual-retreat center that holds an annual marijuana bud-growing contest in the heart of Northern California’s pot-growing country.
Politicians, he says, are “going to see the economic benefits, they’re going to see the health benefits and they’re going to jump on the bandwagon.”
We should NOT wait on states to follow, we need to RESCHEDULE CANNABIS at a federal level so states will no longer be able to still prosecute patients if they chose too. Folks in the Southern states will be forced to continue to suffer unjust persecution while citizens on the westcoast are treated with dignity and respect for being a medical marijuana patient. It is really a shame that America has become this divided, so its time we reschedule cannabis at the federal level.