In other local news, the City of Los Angeles is cracking down on the area's unregulated medical marijuana dispensaries, "L.A. Targets Cannabis Clubs":
Daniel Halbert moved here from Phoenix this year to invest his life savings in what he hoped was a golden opportunity: the medical-marijuana business.Once again, I'm going to express my disagreement with the libertarian/legalization crowd. Remember, "I Don't Smoke Pot, and I Don't Like It."
But on Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council told him to shut down his dispensary, part of a broad crackdown against a growing and unregulated marijuana industry. More than 600 dispensaries have taken advantage of a loophole in city regulations to open shop here in the past two years.
The unchecked growth has alarmed some city leaders.
"They were like a rash," said City Councilman Ed Reyes, who is leading the effort to shut down many of the dispensaries. He said a colleague told him that at one dispensary near a high school, the student crowds outside made the pot store look "like an ice cream shop from the 1950s."
No report on this yet from Will "I'm a Stoner" Wilkinson, who has argued that "the drug war is stupid." Probably out rolling a fat one at this moment!
Related: R.S. McCain, "Attention, police: Arrest Will Wilkinson!"
Hey, Don. I'm not Will Wilkinson but I did write a post about your cannabis post some time back although I don't know if you ever saw it. This link is entirely relevant to your post here but I won't be surprised if you delete it anyway. Cheers.
ReplyDeleteUh.... Hey man! I'd like to leave a comment about the pot dispensaries.
ReplyDeleteUh... I forgot what I was going to say...
Dear Mr. Douglas: You may remember Kathryn Johnston, an 88 year old black woman, a grandmother, owned a gun. In November 2006, Atlanta drug cops broke down her door. She tired to defend herself, and was shot dead. Whaddya know, turns out the raid was based on a falsely sworn warrant, the cops staged the whole thing to meet their quota. RS McCain, still suffering from the aftereffects of his chemical excesses, would doubtless laugh loudly, thinking Johnston's death the funniest thing since The One's visit to 57 states...That's cold comfort to Johnston's family.
ReplyDeleteImplicit in this post is the notion that ingesting drugs will have a price for society. Yes it will. But the drug war has had a price too. The Fourth Amendment has been battered into pulp along with draconian "asset forfeiture" laws that haven't stopped the evil effects of drugs. The excessively jocular tone of McC's post that you linked to suggests to me that he has an uneasy conscience about his drug ingestions, and is trying to square it by making other people toe the line of the law. This is what liberals do. It is certainly incongruous.
What do I propose? I should like to see the Feds pass a law waiving the enforcement of federal drug laws for certain drugs. What drugs would be exempt would be negotiated. Certainly heroin would be in a different category than marijuana. I would like to see what would happen if a state decided to stop marijuana prosecutions, and the feds went along. You might say that we'd have a lot more maggot-filled homes with abandoned kids. You might be right. But Kathryn Johnston's death, one of several, points the other way. I think it is time to try this experiment and see the results, which is why I would have a state try it first in the Brandeis manner.
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
To paraphrase: drugs don't neglect children, people do.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Greg. I knew there had to be something you and I can agree on (excluding the blanket condemnation of liberals, of course).
ReplyDelete