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I can understand how people in the 70s felt when the country seemed to have become unrecognizable in two decades and the average story now seemed to be coming from another planet or the mind of a satirist.
But here we are in this exciting world whose stories would be implausible and insane by 2001 standards.
Take this headline above. It’s an actual story.
A judge has ordered New York regulators not to award any more cannabis licenses pending a decision on an explosive lawsuit alleging officials favored convicted drug felons over disabled veterans to sell legal marijuana.
The lawsuit alleges regulators with the Office of Cannabis Management and state Cannabis Control Board failed to set up a legal cannabis market envisioned by New York’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA), which specifically lists disabled vets as one of five priority “social and economic equity” groups to get at least 50% of employment opportunities in the budding pot industry.
New York’s first licenses went to “justice involved” individuals or partners of felons convicted of selling marijuana, the suit claims.
Only disabled vets who partnered with someone with a marijuana conviction were awarded a license during the first go-round.
Justice-involved or justice-impacted is the latest euphemism for criminals. In its bid for DEIness, New York reserved licenses for people who had been busted before, some of whom were likely drug dealers.
Letting them have first crack at dealing drugs (legally) was a kind of reparations for police defunders.
The whole story is also incomprehensibly pointless because, despite the lobbying of the legalize drugs crowd, most people are perfectly happy buying cheaper illegal drugs.
California’s legal drugs business is going bust. Oregon cannabis businesses are “struggling to survive”.
Handing out drug dealing licenses to veterans in New York isn’t doing them any favors. Neither is handing them out to druggies who will be competing with the product being sold more cheaply by their street comrades. Legal pot has gone to pot. The real drug dealers have won and will go on winning.
Government is so dysfunctional that they can’t sell ice cream in the desert, or legal pot. I suspected when they legalized it in California that most users would continue buying on the underground market.
Seriously, their lack of business sense, while humorous, is catastrophic.
My ex girlfriend used to buy that illegal crap. Actually, she had her ex boyfriend and family members give it to her.
It was crap.
As soon as she lit it up, I knew it was dirt weed. I miss her. though.
If governmental entities weren’t so dysfunctional, the monies made off licences and taxes could be extremely “high”, but that would require going after the non-licenced sellers and illegal buyers on the street. Therein lies the rub. You’re right…this is a bizarro-world story.
They are going after illegal sellers
After promising that legalization would end the we in drugs, there’s a whole secondary war on pot growers and sellers underway on the same scale
This time for not paying taxes.
They have to use cash at the “dispensereys.” They can’t legally process credit or debit cards.
The feds are psychotic. Just let the stoners smoke their pot and leave them alone. They don’t bother anybody.
Remember Eric Garner? He died in custody (choke hold / “I can’t breathe”) after being arrested for selling “loose” cigarettes in New York in 2014. Rush Limbaugh put the blame on the State for going after its lost tax revenue with a vengeance.
Garner was black – a fact that should be incidental. The white officer was not prosecuted for murder, but was unable to return to the police force.
That was less than 10 years ago.
Someone need explain why the world of 1938 was better than 1936, due to the Marihuana Tax Stamp Act of 1937.
FWIW, Reefer Madness was not an actual documentary.