Part 1: Dynamic MMJ laws force businesses onto the street
Medical marijuana [MMJ] is great assuming you live in a state which approved it, you have a disease more chronic than cottonmouth, and you’re fortunate enough to be in a life situation where carrying a state card doesn’t jeopardize your job status or ruin your reputation.
That sort of good news comes with a whole heaping helping of bad news — which explains the ball and chain’s appearance in the title and the picture above. It’s going to take all my power and skill to limit the bad news categories to ten.
That means I won’t be wasting a precious part on an introduction. So, let’s dive right in.
“Winning” [the iron medal] limited medical marijuana initiatives invites legislators into a vicious cycle of creating, editing, and deleting whatever proposition or referendum you voted for after the fact. Voting for MMJ — as opposed to repealing MJ prohibition — insures endless regulatory skirmishes will waste taxpayers’ time and money until the end of days.
The casualties from said skirmishes are often fully compliant, legitimate MMJ businesspersons forced onto the street by dynamic laws.
What do I mean by “dynamic” laws? In this case we’re talking about dynamic as in “characterized by continuous change,” as opposed to static, as in “having no motion, being at rest.” Static laws are in place for every other commodity known to man, such as raddichio, molybdenum, and beef jerky. Dynamic is reserved for … you guessed it, the devil’s weed that our benevolent nanny state protects us from.
Dynamic also means “objects in motion.” But we’re not talking about objects moving through space like the Crab Nebula. In this series, the objects in motion are people, people like you and me who jumped through every hoop lawmakers threw at them because they were determined to make a go at cannabis commerce.
Too many of these MMJ business owners have found themselves on the street and out of the game altogether not long afterwards — often hundreds of thousands of unrecoupable startup costs later — after lawmakers approved capricious changes to MMJ laws. Instituing a 1,000-feet-away-from-a-school regulation isntantly takes down a few dozen dispensaries in a big city. The first thing the former ownersand their former employees will do is file for unemployment, further depleting government coffers instead of helping to replenish them like they were doing perfectly well before the rule changes.
As things stand in this formerly great country of ours, we’re not talking about one set of lawmakers empowered to lob gobs of legal grenades at legitimate MMJ business owners. We’re talking about three: city, county, and state lawmakers can all throw haymakers at existing pot businesses any time they choose. There doesn’t have to be any rhyme or reason for it. But wait, the number is actually four. I forgot the leviathan with a history of swallowing MMJ businesses like so much plankton — the federal government.
I suppose we should consider ourselves fortunate that community groups participating in “adopt-a-median” programs don’t have a say about MMJ laws for each mile that they police.
If you don’t live in a MMJ state, perhaps you didn’t realize this is the way things work in MMJ states like Colorado and California. You probably thought it was legal to open dispensaries all over those states. After all, they passed referendums, amendments or propositions to become MMJ states, right?
Correction: that’s how you’d like to think things work. Reality is a lot less logical. Cities or counties can vote MMJ businesses out anytime, at their discretion — and do so all the time. Is that dynamic enough for you?
Contrast these dynamic laws with the static laws for sin twins alcohol and tobacco. Oh, lawmakers may change the labeling on cigarette packaging every decade or so. But the day isn’t coming when a “You can no longer sell cigarettes within 1,000 feet of a daycare center” edict forces your local Piggly Wiggly mart to pull Marlboro cartons from the shelves. And imagine the outcry if a rural drive-through liquor store had to shutter the windows because it couldn’t cough up $15,000 for a creative new fee — like a separate license to sell microbrews — above and beyond what the store already pays for a state liquor license.
Am I writing this to convince you that lawmakers are giving MMJ business owners a raw deal? No. I’m writing this to point out that you gave lawmakers carte blanche to give MMJ businesses a raw deal — over and over again — by approving MMJ initiatives in the first place. I’m here to tell you that voting for MMJ initiatives instead of repealing prohibition is the equivalent of wearing a “Kick Me” sign.
Dynamic MMJ laws contribute weight and links to the insufferable ball and chain cannabis commerce is lugging around. You may be sensing that this author feels this state of affairs should concern you. Why? Because you’ll be footing the bill for this legislative ingenuity if your state becomes another copycat MMJ state.
Want some specific examples of the endless legislative wheel spinning occuring in every MMJ state? Try these:
[From Sensible Colorado] On Monday, June 6th 2011 the Town Council of Crested Butte will consider shutting down the only MMC [medical marijuana center] in Gunnison County, population 15,000. Just last year, Crested Butte joined other responsible Colorado municipalities in allowing patients to obtain medicine from city-approved dispensaries. Now, they are backtracking — citing highly questionable claims that town employees may face prosecution for issuing dispensary licenses. For the record, no government employee in history has been prosecuted for issuing dispensary licenses.
Read between the lines: Funny, there’s no mention of reimbursing the symbolically razed MMC for its startup costs, it’s operating costs, or it’s future losses. There’s precedence for that. Victims’ families in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 weren’t reimbursed either.
[Also from Sensible Colorado] Once again [June 2011], the Colorado Health Department [CDPHE] has launched an attack on medical marijuana caregivers [taxpayers who were making an honest living growing herb for “patients”]. Hiding behind the Attorney General’s questionable legal interpretation, the CDPHE is now attempting to require caregivers to regularly assist patients with “activities of daily living” including transportation, housekeeping, meal preparation, and more. This ruling will limit patient choice and force patients to find caregivers who will not just provide quality medicine, but also provide additional, and often unnecessary, services.
Read between the lines: “And more” implies that caregivers must now wipe patients’ bums and service their sexual desires — or report for immediate reassignment to Jack-In-The-Box.
Well, this is off to a rousing start. Let’s try a few more:
[From Drug War Chronicle] The Los Angeles City Council voted 9-3 Tuesday [January 2010] to approve a medical marijuana dispensary ordinance that, if enforced, will shut down more than 80% of the city’s estimated nearly one thousand dispensaries. The ordinance also bars dispensaries from operating within a thousand feet of schools, parks, day care centers, religious institutions, drug treatment centers, or other dispensaries. The ordinance allows for only 70 dispensaries to operate in the city, but grandfathers in 137 dispensaries that were licensed before the council imposed the moratorium and are still in business. The number of allowed dispensaries could shrink even further if suitable locations that do not violate the 1,000-foot rule cannot be found.
Read between the lines: That was sayonara for 700 dispensaries [the DVD, How Weed Won The West, depicts the carnage in gruesome detail]. When can the former owners pick up their reimbursement checks? In the year 3016, when The Messiah rectifies every atrocity committed by mankind.
[From the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association] Michigan’s medical marijuana law needs to be tweaked to make it easier to regulate and enforce, Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper told county commissioners Thursday.
Cooper said she has met with the county’s state legislators and urged commission members to work together to help enact changes to the law that was passed by voters in 2008 by an overwhelming 63%-37% margin. Any changes would have to be passed by a two-thirds majority in the state House and Senate.
The law was aimed at helping those suffering chronic pain caused by severe illness like cancer and multiple sclerosis. But Cooper said some people are using frivolous reasons for getting certificates that allow them to grow medical marijuana or to buy it from certified caregivers.
“Now we’re seeing young people with hammertoes or dislocated shoulders getting certificates,” she said. “And children under the age of 18 may obtain a medical marijuana card.”
Read between the lines: This is too easy. Reaction #1, to “dislocated shoulders:” What if you put a little extra mustard on your tennis serve, your shoulder rips out of its socket during a deciding tiebreaker, and you’re left writhing on blue concrete until an ambulance arrives to ferry you to an ER room where a doc with $200,000 in student loans reattaches your humerus to your scapula? You should turn to 100% addictive Dilaudid [heroin in a pill] when all you want is a little happy leaf?
I see.
So much for compassionate care.
Reaction #2, to “hammertoes:” I’ve probably deceived you into thinking an intellect like mine can tap into a massive mind-bank of medical terminology whence the definition for “hammertoe” can be easily retrieved. Er … I’m afraid not. I have to look it up like every other slob.
Prosecutor Cooper somehow feels this arcane podiatric malady falls into the realm of “common knowledge.” She obviously has some familiarity with the rather vivid term, “hammertoe.”
Hold that thought.
Let’s see what we can find from the “trusted health information” over at medline.com.
Hammertoe usually affects the second toe [counting from which side?]. However, it may also affect the other toes. The toe moves into a claw-like position. The most common cause of hammertoe is wearing short, narrow shoes that are too tight [aha — like those 6” stiletto heels Prosecutor Cooper wears to sway jurors? Just thinking aloud, here]. The toe is forced into a bent position. Muscles and tendons in the toe tighten and become shorter.
“The toe moves into a claw-like position” suggests that essentially the affliction transforms its traumatized victim into a wolf. Or a she-wolf. If there are any prosecutors or fellow citizens running around with this malady — as best they can, with tendons tightened and toes shortened — hopefully they’re sedated with something along the lines of a rich indica when my loved ones are out jogging in the foothills.
Here’s a case where a modicum amount of medical marijuana might mitigate the ever-present hammertoe menace. It might even eliminate the need for a brutal corrective operation. Maybe I’m a little slow . . . but Ms. Cooper is bothered by citizens of Oakland County, Michigan managing clawfoot, I mean hammertoe, with marijuana because???
Reaction #3, to “Children under the age of 18 may obtain a medical marijuana card.” Oh, dear. Let me see if I’m interpreting this correctly. Imagine a child of 17 is in the advanced stages of a “frivolous” disease. Take chronic lymphocytic leukemia, for example. God forbid the “child” obtains a state MMJ card and substitutes a few pacifying tokes of White Widow for a nauseating pharmaceutical cocktail.
That’s all wrong.
However, two months later, when the child turns 18, then it’s all right and it makes perfect sense.
Now I see Prosecutor Cooper’s point.
Her point is she’s insane.
Thanks for keeping us in the loop.
Unfortunately, everyone in Michigan who voted for MMJ initiatives instead of working to defeat MJ prohibition gave Prosecutor Cooper and every other wolverine state legislator the right to exercise perpetual insanity.
The great state of Michigan — welcome to the exclusive, sixteen-state MMJ club. Glad to have you. Keep the set-ups coming.
Ohio — are you next? Step right up. Sign here.
I could keep the mirth flowing, but it would take the next ten years of your life to read all the kooky MMJ moratoriums, modifications, and rule changes those sixteen MMJ states enacted in the last year alone.
All kidding aside, get ready for the following legislative brainstorms to become law in MMJ states near you:
- Raising the bar on qualifying diseases to Mayo Clinic levels. Future applicants will be forced to undergo prohibitively expensive batteries of tests, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that their claims of being sufficiently ravaged by illness to qualify for MMJ purchases aren’t “fraudulent.”
- Tracking every single state MMJ purchase in a federal DEA database. Colorado dispensaries must input all sales into a state database starting July 1st. Thank you, Big Brother [cue music: David Bowie, “1984”].
- DUI deaths are an acceptable casualty, just boys being boys; the first high-profile “medibles” death could collapse that state’s MIP [Marijuana Infused Products] industry. Other “concerned” states will quickly follow suit — to shield us from the deadly peril.
Dynamic laws which force businesses that jumped through every hoop and then some onto the streets is just one disturbing reason medical marijuana has become cannabis commerce’s ball and chain. Alas, we’re just warming up. Nine more reasons await. They come in varying shades of mischievous, wasteful, and ruinous.
Update 7/2/2011: Dynamic laws just hit close to home. Five blocks away, to be precise. I’d strolled over to Evergreen Apothecary to pick up a cone-shaped pre-roll, only to find shockwaves reverberating around the squeaky-clean establishment. Evergreen, like every other dispensary, has been waiting around since last summer for their license to be approved via the Department of Revenue’s invasive review process. They’ve also been bracing themselves, awaiting the final tally for their annual fees — which, by their best guess, shaped by their size and previous fees, should have come in at around $24,000.
Well, the staff had just received the news that the DOR wanted $70,000 blood money.
Hence the sense a hungry beaurocratic bear was swatting at their beehive.
No jokes about this one, folks. I really feel for them.
Table of Contents:
Part 1: Dynamic MMJ laws force businesses onto the streetPart 2: MMJ limits cannatax to a fraction of what it could be
Part 3: MMJ limits job incubation to a fraction of what it could be
Part 4: MMJ limits cannabis' contribution to GDP to a fraction of what it could be
Part 5: Ironically, MMJ blocks clinical research into cannabis’ healing properties
Part 6: It's taking the tranquilizing drug of gradualism
Part 7: The foot-in-the-door theory is flawed
Part 8: Emphasizing MMJ in the present pushes true legalization back to the future
Part 9: MMJ trivializes recreational and industrial use
Part 10: Fuck the patients
[Bonus] Part 11: It keeps 45,000 pot "offenders" imprisoned
[Bonus] Part 12: It keeps the DEA in business
[Bonus] Part 13: Cities and counties can vote it out anytime
7 comments
Thomas Chong says:
Jul 25, 2011
You must remember medical marijuana has opened the door that can never be shut again so rather than oppose or criticize the the “medical approach”, embrace it. The truth is we all smoke for a medical reason whether we know it or not. Stress relief is probably the number one “medical” reason we healthy people smoke it. “It relaxes me”. ” Helps me enjoy my time off” or helps me enjoy doing boring things. Airline pilots use it for long flights. Athletes use it to wind down after a hard game or practice. Stress relief. But the most compelling argument has to be the “take it or leave it” qualities. Pot is not physically addicting. Studies have shown people who smoked for years can and have stopped cold turkey with no physical side effects. And the good news is stopping a heavy pot habit can be beneficial to ones well being. So don’t get cute and knock the medical approach and realize the number one harmful addiction in America is junk food.
This addiction is killing Americans faster than drunk drivers. Over eating leads to heart problems, diabetics, and a host of other ailments that is encouraged by our so-called American culture of television ads and sit/coms that promote unhealthy habits as a way of life rather than a way of death. Pot, hemp, cannibis was given to us by our Creator when the Universe was created.”I give thee Green Herb and it shall be for meat” Genesis 29. And it was the disgraced President Nixon who gave us the DEA criminal gang and the money draining drug laws. So lets support the medical approach toward pot and educate the masses about the many ills pot can help with instead of trying to be ultra clever with the outlaw comedian approach….tc
Lory Kohn says:
Jul 25, 2011
I could take exception to several of your points. However, you are the co-author of the immortal lines:
mama try to tell me
try to tell me how to live
but I don’t listen to her
cause my head is like a sieve
So you can write whatever you want, whenever you want to write it, and I’ll be grateful for the contribution. Thank you for taking the time to comment.
Don McAdams says:
Oct 15, 2011
Len Richmond’s movie is excellent. Under your picture of the youtube video, you state that, “Schedule 1 drugs can’t be tested on humans.” This is actually not the case. NIDA has a mandate that no Schedule 1 drugs can be tested for any benefits, but tests for potential harm are ran all the time. For a host of research, I recommend, well, Len Richmond’s movie. As something just as valuable, if not more so, is this 20 minute seminar from Dr. Abrams, http://projectcbd.org/Medicine.html#CME . He has over 30 years of NIDA funded MJ research that he talks about, as well as other research being done around the world, Dr. Guzman’s work from Spain being the most ground-breaking to date, mitigating glioblastoma multiforme, or brain tumors. Then I would suggest Dr. Tashkin’s NIDA funded 30+ year study confirming no link to MJ and lung cancer – it even suggested a protective effect from the cigarette smokers. I agree with Tommy Chong and Jack Herer – all use is medical. That being said, the MMJ initiatives may have a huge flaw of not offering enough, especially in the way of research, but it was a necessary step. We would never be talking about full legalization or repealing Prohibition 2 in a serious tone today if it wasn’t for the MMJ road paved for US. And yes, certain indicas high in CBD are better for physical treatments, while sativas high in THC and THCV are better for mental treatments, so recommended strains for the ailments isn’t entirely voodoo… You do bring up a necessary reminder for US all, though – no matter if we’re doing a medical or recreational attempt, research should always be included in the wording…
Lory Kohn says:
Oct 19, 2011
I disagree with your theory that MMJ is paving the way for full legalization, as opposed to blocking it — but respect your opinion. More on this soon. btw, is cannabis effective against spam?
Don McAdams says:
Oct 25, 2011
There is some truth that if Cali would have fully legalized cannabis in ’96, we could likely have 16 legal states today instead of medical states. The growing plethora of medical research could very likely have kept cannabis in a medical box for some time, and may have slowed the repeal / legalize progress. Considering how rigid the government still is on “legalizing,” though, medical really was (and unfortunately still is for the most part) the best avenue to get some freedom. I agree that there needs to be a break from medical to legal, and that would have been nice to see happen already. I believe that its lack of harm and vast medical efficacy will create a rapid shift from medical to repeal very soon, though, and that, almost unarguably, would have never been possible had cannabis not been a hot topic already these past several years, and that would have never happened without mmj initiatives being passed by the People. Perhaps it’s not really a paved road. It’s more like a dirt trail, and we need to get on the interstate. I agree with your sentiment of abandoning the medical model now, that time has come, but it’s not as easy to say for the 34 states that have no mj allowances… Our legalization init is lagging in Ohio, and still has all the hoops to get through yet, while the medical init here has jumped through the last hoop and is now collecting the half million signatures needed to get it on the ballot for 2012. I’m still gonna support both efforts, even though I have no qualifying medical condition…
Lory Kohn says:
Oct 25, 2011
Don, thanks for providing those links and sources to the groundbreaking research that has been performed.
You seem to like to write a bit — how’s about writing an article for CC clarifying what research can and can’t be performed on Schedule One drugs in the USA, and perhaps contrasting those regulations with international regulations?
I will admit that there have been benefits that have evolved from the flirtation with MMJ. For example, it has really pushed the envelope in medibles. I’ll be at my “caregiver,” Evergreen Apothecary today, listening to customers’ tales of how medibles have been helping them with their conditions, a variation on the “treat yourself” theme …
air jordan 11 says:
May 27, 2016
I want to say – thank you for this!