The Left always lies. Its promises that its “reforms” will solve problems or make life better always end in misery. We’ve discussed before how marijuana legalization has made society worse. But on the production end, the “legal drugs” that were supposed to generate a lot of tax revenue aren’t selling well because of high prices. Most drug users still buy illegal drugs and much of the legal drug production serves both markets.
Legalizing marijuana production just means that the operations sell both legally and illegally. And California, like other states, has ramped up crackdowns on the “illegal” operations purely for money reasons.
The drug war is bigger than ever.
Governor Newsom, in his State of the State address, declared that the National Guard would “refocus on the real threats facing our state”, like, “illegal cannabis farms”.
The Cannabis Advisory Committee’s 22-member panel (the government can’t even try to cash in on drugs without a committee consisting of, among others, a fisheries attorney, four union reps for drug workers, and an NAACP president) warned that “Lack of enforcement is creating a thriving environment for the unregulated ‘underground market,’”
Now that we’ve legalized drugs, let’s start cracking down on drugs.
Let’s send out the National Guard to go after anyone who’s growing drugs without using union labor from any of the four unions represented on California’s 22-member cartel committee.
The grey market drug operations tended by aliens, legal and illegal, is turning lethal.
This was last month.
Three men and a woman were executed, and a fifth victim was injured in a shooting at a marijuana farm in Kingfisher County.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has not released the victims’ identities – authorities say next of kin notification is pending because of a significant language barrier – but said they were all Chinese Nationals.
This was the deadliest mass drug killing since this one.
The Riverside County Coroner’s Office has released the identities of the seven Laotian nationals killed in a shootout at an illegal marijuana growing operation in Aguanga.
But plenty of workers are dying in more conventional ways.
At least 35 workers died on cannabis farms in a five-year span through 2021.
Workers described living outdoors, without sanitation or sufficient food, and told of employers who directed them to charity food banks or ran them off at gunpoint without pay. While accompanying police on raids, Times journalists saw hazardous pesticides frequently in use, including at a San Bernardino County farm where a young couple slept in a shed next to a greenhouse that reeked of metamidofos, a deadly nerve agent no longer sold in the United States but still available in Mexico. The young woman said she was pregnant.
Meet the legal drug trade. Looks a whole lot like the illegal one except more cash flows to Democrats.
A Western sheriff still fighting the war on drugs, Honea watched as 15 people tried to flee when deputies stormed a cannabis farm in Berry Creek. Three turned out to be bosses, who had assault weapons and body armor on the property. The 12 workers, all from Mexico, were without cellphones or passports. Honea said investigators learned the travel documents were stashed at a different location, suggesting the workers were being held captive for their labor.
The drug war isn’t over, it’s bigger and uglier than ever. Legalizing drugs just made drug abuse, cartels and the entire murderous corrupt industry much harder to fight.
So much for the leftist lies about how legalizing pot would fix everything. And the libertarians trotting out the tired Capone analogies promising that organized crime would go away if we legalized pot.
It turns out organized crime is happier with a state of lawlessness than a state of law and order.
Who coulda predicted that?
David Mu says
When the movement began to legalize – it was my sense that the legalization would merely be a new tool for abuse.
Most won’t agreed with me, but after nearly a century of government and cannabis it might have been far better to simply decriminalize it. But government can’t keep itself from this. Nor can many people who have personal ideas about what others should be, and this is especially bad condition of the American heritage. Since the Puritans, too many Americans ‘know’ better and want to control – whether for fun or profit. So says an descendant of Mercy Short. She was one of the useful ‘things’ for the Rev. Cotton Mather and that craze at Salem Village. Fun and profit. And still here.
In America – it’s always the fun and profit.
Beez says
I agree that decriminalization is the best approach, but decriminalization is not legalization. My scheme: Marijuana possession SHOULD be made (by state law) a class 4 misdemeanor with a $50 fine for 1st and 2nd offenses but mandatory imprisonment of one full year for a 3rd offense. It’s an addictive drug, just one that’s more psychologically addictive than physical. It also has been correlated with mental illnesses in heavy users. And sale to a minor should remain a felony.
WJ says
It never ceases to amaze me how, a weed, can control so many weak minds.
Bruce Burleson says
I understand the sentiment of this article but to me the reality is that the so-called “War on Drugs” has been an epic failure from beginning to end. I don’t think the government should be involved in people’s decisions whether or not to do drugs.
BJB AZ says
Our “government” is supposed to protect our lives and property from
crazies, criminals, thieves, and drug cartels.
“Whether or not to do drugs” is not a rational decision made by thinking people.
You are naive and gullible.
And the medical profession is also involved in promoting drug addiction and
dangerous medical experiments.
Jeff Bargholz says
So why are prescription drugs so prevalent? Most senior citizens take multiple pills a day.
Are they unthinking?
Lightbringer says
I can’t speak for other old people, but my life is better for having all those prescription drugs. I have four conditions that are addressed: Asthma, high blood pressure, an overactive thyroid, and chronic pain. All are mitigated to a great extent by medication. I could probably live without most of it, but I could not function to the extent that I do.
Beez says
I used to take this position too. Do you think adolescents (ages 11 to 24) should be permitted to use marijuana? The human brain doesn’t stop growing until age 24. The LAST thing young people need is to use marijuana. Heavy use is correlated with mental illnesses, and also heavy use has been shown to lower IQ as much as 7 points. It’s not reversible.
Jeff Bargholz says
I smoke pot and I’m smarter than you.
Sheri Ann Hardinger says
pot makes you think you are
Gordon says
Great, let’s sell fentanyl at Walmart
Jeff Bargholz says
Walmart already does sell that. Or equivalences. Opiods.
Jeff Bargholz says
I just smoked a joint so I agree.
A quarter of it, anyway. It had been lying on a table for two weeks and I only just now smoked it because this article inspired me. I don’t see marijuana as addictive.
We all know the worst and best addictive substance is p^$$^. For straight guys, anyway.
Al Fargnoli says
And it wasn’t until 1914. A lot of bad laws and amendments were passed around that time.
Algorithmic Analyst says
As predicted.
What I overlooked when they were making these absurd laws is that they may have *wanted* them to fail.
Zundfolge says
I lived in Colorado when they legalized weed. It destroyed the state. First it made the state a magnet for leftists, so the politics of the state shifted from a reddish purple to deep blue worse than CA almost overnight. Secondly it flooded the state with homeless young men. Before legal weed we had homeless, but they were generally the broken down old men you think of when you think of homeless, but the new wave of homeless were young, mentally ill and intensely destructive. Third it destroyed the retail rental market because every little mom & pop owned strip mall that took in a dispensary (even just medicinal, not recreation) ended up losing most of their long time decent businesses because they got tired of being broken into and their customers harassed by the aforementioned feral homeless and the pot shop’s trash being ransacked every night looking for scraps and spread all over the parking lot.
I hate the war on drugs and I have long had a pretty wide libertarian streak but legal weed narrowed that PDQ. There’s an old saying “a conservative is a liberal that’s been mugged and a libertarian is a conservative that’s been arrested” but we can add that “there’s a lot of conservatives that were libertarians that lived near a pot shop”.
Jeff Bargholz says
All the problems you described are caused by FEDERAL impostures in sate’s rights.
Stephen Triesch says
This is just an observation, and I have no data to support it, but it seems that we in Washington State saw a significant decline in the public square within a year or two of legalizing marijuana and making to widely and easily available. It seems like it pushed every vulnerable person over the edge and into non-productivity, unemployment, homelessness, and mental illness.
Jeff Bargholz says
They were always lie that.
Billy Corr says
It wasn’t legalization of cannabis that created a nightmare; it was the stupid and leaden-footed way in which cannabis was legalized.
Cannabis should have the same legal status as lettuce or zucchini’
BJB AZ says
Yes, feed it to your kids.
You are out of your mind.
Jeff Bargholz says
Yeah but you can’t smoke lettuce or zucchini.
Well, I guess you could but it’s probably not a good idea.
Teresa Gomez says
As a nurse, I found so much Cannabis in my people who were now dying. I asked the wife how long he had been on this, and she told me he stopped five years ago. He didn’t smoke, but the cannabis stayed in him, making me think. I am a Christian, so I never take drugs. I told all of my children this so they would never do this. It scared me. For most of the people who smoked and had coughing, the first thing I asked them did you smoke cigarettes and cannabis, and most of them did.
Jeff Bargholz says
No offense but you seem to mix up your pronouns.
Lightbringer says
Isn’t cannabis more damaging to the lungs than tobacco? In spite of a ton of advertising, some of it by the state and medical authorities, I cannot imagine any benefit to THC in any form, except in some cases of glaucoma, in spite of all of the propaganda that’s flooding the airwaves and billboards.
Dr.Ernesto says
I don’t need to smoke weed. People smoke weed to make them feel the way I feel all the time.
Lightbringer says
Do you have ADD too? My mind is such an entertaining place that I feel little need for much else, and certainly not for psychotropic drugs!
BJB AZ says
Our sick society is seeking relief through drugs and anti-depressants.
No chemical or plant can make life better.
It’s a cheap, lazy, dishonest escape that ends in emptiness and death.
112 says
I have a disc that rips out muscles in my back. I can handle the pain with my mind and eliminate all inflammation with my liking my life and keeping a good attitude. However, the sheer level of pain I digest makes my head feel like it is being crushed in my skull after some time, not that I can’t handle it, but weed makes life so much more manageable.
I smoked it before too, I make more sales at work, eliminates the frustration of dealing with the retarded clients and their childish emotions and moronic statements and questions, and even more moronic refusing to ask questions but pretending they know.
Saying life is bad is a statement that causes cellular death and inflammation, your cells understand live and die, and that communicates death. That being said people can live normal and happy lives and also smoke weed, same as chocolate milk.
roberta says
I would rather these drug addicts (that seem to be everywhere) find a life, instead of this slow death existence they are caught up in. I feel for them, and their families. This sh-t is horrible to watch.
The loss of potential, and the loss of true happiness is what bothers me the most.
The poop, litter, filth, crime, loitering, etc-etc-etc are terrible, but to me the lost potential is the worst.
Lots of them started this voyage with marijuana.
The trip will end for some over the next few Arctic freeze days to come. God rest their souls.
112 says
Why not Tylenol? Lots of negative effects and is a disgusting pharma drug.
Of the people I know that smoke weed in Canada, less than 5% do any other drug. It’s true that it’s colder and a few hundred die every winter. Still, weed is something every old guy can say he tried and is fine. Those chemical drugs are a commitment you are making for years to come on behalf of yourself and everyone around you. You have to start with seriously not caring about your life. The exception is people with lazy parents that did not supervise and you get people that start doing chemical drugs at 8 years old, those kind of addictions after years are rough stuff. With weed there are some in very poor areas, and unlike other drugs many stop, but obviously any smoking at that age will cause permanent damage.
Jeff Bargholz says
Smoking pot and watching Netflix while you’re stoned is horrible? No offense but I think you’re a bit naive.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
112 says
… what a bunch of barbarians. The legal weed stores in Canada are doing fine. Hey and they were selling it for insane prices no one would pay, so people were going to the black market. Then they lowered them, and now the black market is begging you to pay 300 a pound, less than 70 cents Canadian a gram, and there’s nothing of value to steal.
Maybe the issue was the government. In British Columbia any store can sell it, and in Quebec in most places people will just give you weed, give someone a foot massage for 10 minutes you’ll get a gram from at least 15% of the province.
Maybe if your government wasn’t trying to exploit you and instead was putting barbarians in jail then weed wouldn’t collapse America. Also maybe it isn’t weed collapsing America, and the problems deep roots.are being exposed by this.
Steven Kardas says
Legal pot…illegal pot. What a joke. There is nothing the government can do to stop people from taking drugs and stemming the flow of drugs to them. It is impossible for government to legislate morality and temperance. Any Master of the Obvious can see that after decades of the “War on Drugs”. It is a complete and total failure. It has regressed to a point of ridiculously small returns on the money and resources thrown at it for decades. An immensely expensive game of Whack-A-Mole. I’ll be honest and say I don’t know the solution but something, anything different needs to be attempted.
Jeff Bargholz says
Just smoke a joint and relax, I say. It works for me.
Sheri Ann Hardinger says
When you legalize something, it gives the perception that it is not harmful or immoral.. pot is harmful, in many ways
112 says
I see articles by others that amount to “I don’t like it”, but with the usual quality of his work here these articles stick out like a sore thumb. Maybe that’s how he feels. It’s important to read this and know that many Americans will happily rip you away from your family and business and make you work as a slave for years in a hellish place while they wish homosexual rape on you in there if you have a plant and smoke some.
They are all about health.
It’s a perfect scheme to legalize the dangerous drugs weed smokers hate. Can’t get.us.in a coalition with these guys to fight it, managed to.divide the population for the next move. The old guys think much more short term, like feelings (not to say that the average young guy has any.concievable use), want it banned because they don’t like it.
Read the comments a few times to get over how they use all these to legalize horrific drugs in advance. It’s less easier when you know what’s coming. Not that you can blame them, 99% of weed smokers don’t show it and what they see is freaks that work to embody a stereotype to create an identity for themselves of a walking ad.
Spurwing Plover says
Like the old anti drugs ads used t o say WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL IT DOPE?
Jeff Bargholz says
“like” that……………………….
Jeff Bargholz says
I bet you suck a lot of dicks, don’t you?
Jeff Bargholz says
I do love BJs, you homo. What normal guy doesn’t?
I bet you teach special ed. Fucking retard. Mongoloid.
Jeff Bargholz says
They don’t………….
Lightbringer says
How many new aircraft carriers have we been able to build with marijuana tax revenue? If the answer is one or fewer, then legalization has been a complete failure from a government revenue standpoint.
Lightbringer says
The conditions on those illegal marijuana plantations are far worse than anything experienced in the antebellum Southern cotton plantations. Why do we go on and on about slavery in the old South and say not a word about what’s going on in our Western states to grow a crop that the educated elite statue-topplers crave?