See, it used to be law enforcement that threatened people growing marijuana (BTW, it still does, if they aren’t growing it at a licensed facility/farm, or if Los Federales get wind, because it is still illegal under federal law). Remember the fun days of Cheech and Chong movies? Now, it’s under threat because you drove a fossil fueled vehicle to work instead of biking
The Biggest Threat to Growing Marijuana in California Used to Be the Law. Now, it’s Climate Change
climate change joke
Valerie Leveroni Corral spent days after lightning set the Santa Cruz Mountains on fire not knowing if a cannabis crop her organization grows for the sick and dying had survived.
The one-acre crop sits on the site of a former Boy Scout campgrounds, off a rutted road so deep in the woods of unincorporated south Santa Cruz County that only fire could find it without a guide. In fact, the CZU Lightning Complex fire came close but skipped the woods, a lucky fluke. (snip)
In 1993, Corral was a co-founder, with her then husband, Mike Corral, of the nation’s first medicinal cannabis collective, the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM). They grew marijuana organically in their backyard as medicine for WAMM members, people of all ages and walks of life who had incurable conditions and terminal illnesses.
Members received cannabis for free or in trade for working the garden. (Most donated their time, care and money). When federal Drug Enforcement Agency officials raided the farm and arrested the Corrals in 2002, an army of sick people rallied to defend them. So did Santa Cruz officials. They sued the DEA and the Department of Justice for raiding a respected community organization sanctioned by California’s 1996 landmark law legalizing medical marijuana, Proposition 215, which Valerie Corral helped draft. A Federal judge ordered the DEA to let WAMM be. (snip)
California’s law legalizing recreational marijuana, Proposition 64, which went into effect in January 2018, did what the DEA could not: It dismantled the collective. When its landlord’s mortgage holder, Wells Fargo, refused to allow it to obtain a state license, WAMM lost its headquarters, where it had held weekly meetings and dispensed cannabis to members for 17 years. Corral said the bank didn’t want a cannabis business there because the drug remains illegal under Federal law.
The collective’s cannabis is now cultivated in collaboration with professional growers in two plots, 40 minutes away from each other, because the law restricts where cannabis can be grown and made available, and affordable land that meets the regulations is scarce. The collective rented an office in midtown Santa Cruz months ago, but it is still months away from opening, because it has not yet obtained all the necessary legal paperwork under the new law to be able to dispense cannabis products to its members.
We now understand the law, right? Well, actually, there is a lot more information on it, including
Legalizing marijuana has not only stalled medicinal cannabis growers like Corral, whose collective includes cancer patients, it has also driven new and veteran growers underground, a trend with serious environmental repercussions.
Some have turned to indoor pot grows, operations that require enormous amounts of electricity for light fixtures, dehumifiders, heating and ventilation. Researchers estimate that indoor grow operations use about eight times the amount of energy per square-foot as do average commercial buildings. Other growers have gone deeper into forested areas than ever, cutting down trees to create plots that pose risks to humans and ecosystems.
And, that is mostly it for ‘climate change”. They blame the fires, most of which were set by humans, unintentionally and intentionally, and now California’s laws are causing it by driving growers to use more energy. It just goes to show, Climate Cultists have to drag their cult into everything, including a story on how California’s marijuana legalization laws actually cause problems for old school growers and real environmental issues.
By some estimates, at least 80 percent of the marijuana grown and sold in California is sold on the black market. In 2019, California sold $3.1 billion in legal cannabis, making it the largest market for legal cannabis in the world. It also sold an estimated $8.7 billion in unlicensed pot. Taxes from legal mariuana sales were supposed to stuff the state coffers with $1 billion a year. They have averaged less than half that amount.
Wait, you mean even the uber-liberals in California don’t want to deal with the burdensome regulations and pay their fair share of taxes? Huh.
It won’t break my hears one little bit if marijuana crops fail.
Note how the quoted article mentioned:
1 – a cannabis crop her organization grows for the sick and dying
2 – medicinal cannabis collective
3 – the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM)
4 – as medicine for WAMM members, people of all ages and walks of life who had incurable conditions and terminal illnesses.
5 – an army of sick people
6 – medical marijuana
7 – cancer patients
We’re s’posed to have sympathy here, ’cause it’s being used to help sick people, right? But it also noted that at least 80% of the marijuana grown is sold on the black market, which tells us all that we need to know: it’s not being grown to help sick people, but for people to get high. The bovine feces of ‘medical marijuana’ was never more than an attempt to get a foot in the door to legalize pot for recreational use.
But we already had Marinol, so that argument was as reasonable as Mr Dowd’s political ones. Marinol contains artificial THC, but does not contain the other psychotropic chemicals found in marijuana. Thus, it doesn’t produce as strong a ‘high’ as pot, and the high is what they wanted. If all the advocates were concerned about were cancer patients, they’d have been satisfied with Marinol.
“The bovine feces of ‘medical marijuana’ was never more than an attempt to get a foot in the door to legalize pot for recreational use.” Dana we all know that’s SOP for lying Democommies. Just like “It’s a woman’s right to choose” was the crap slung to legalize baby murder.
Nothing a Democommie has said since 1960 (if then) has been the truth.
If you have a job in which a commercial driver’s license is required, smoke pot even in a state where it is legal, and then get drug tested, you will lose your CDL due to the positive test, and thus your job. Unlike alcohol, which leaves the body entirely as you sober up, the waste metabolites of marijuana — which is what the test finds — can be detected in blood and urine for weeks. You can smoke pot on Friday, get popped for a drug test the following Wednesday, and you will fail, even though you are completely sober at the time. There is no test for current marijuana intoxication.
So, if you run, say, a ready-mix company, and one of your driver’s has an accident, and then fails the drug test, despite being stone-cold sober, your company is liable in a lawsuit for putting an impaired driver behind the wheel of one of your trucks. Your insurance company will demand a reasonable series of random tests, to try to maintain a drug-free workplace, and most will demand that you discharge any drivers who test positive.
When I was working in Virginia, the union combitched that it was unfair to only test CDL drivers, and the company said, you know what, you’re right, and they started testing everybody. And it makes sense: while the drivers are operating the trucks, a lot of other people operate heavy equipment, and you can hurt somebody just as badly with a loader as with a concrete mixer. More, even the office personnel handle the books and money, and one who used illegal drugs might have a greater ‘need’ to skim a bit off the top.
Where I worked around foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, everyone was tested, the Monday after the Super Bowl, up to and including the owner’s trophy wife. I certainly approved.
Were the Lord to come down from Heaven and say to me, “Dana, thou mayest use my power to do one thing to help the people of earth,” I would use that power to change the human brain, to make it immune to all intoxicating drugs. That would improve the human condition everywhere on earth.
Climate change isn’t even close to the intentional harm California has done to the rest of their agriculture industry. Good thing we can still get food from Mexico.
Marijuana has been sold to a gullible generation as something harmless, but it’s not.
Chromosome damage, more dangerous than tobacco, increased accidents due to intoxication, and other issues are all showing up, but Fake News is suppressing coverage.