Going to Pot

Prohibition is a capitalist plot. As soon as Prohibition was enforced, society lost control of the booze market. It opened the flood gates; now anyone could buy alcohol: men, women, and children. Children? Why not? Who’s watching? Enormous splurge in the market. For the first time, women began going regularly to bars; changed their whole design (the bars, not the women), they had to add bathrooms.

Not to mention no taxes. Pure profit, through and through. Free market economy at its best, a capitalist’s dream. And they made it big, ask the Kennedys. Really big. Of course, because booze was illegal, all those capitalists making huge profits on its sale were, unfortunately (ask the Kennedys) labeled “criminals.” Oh sure, sometimes someone ended up with a horse’s head in their bed, but that’s all part of doing business. Nothing stopping one of those criminals’ kids from becoming President, now is there? This is America, after all, the Land of Opportunity and Redemption.

But I digress.

It does make me wonder, though, about the Sheriff of Umatilla County. He showed up with one of the more creative oppositions to legalization that I’ve heard: “Legalization will open the field to criminal operations. When there’s nothing left to stop them, they’ll set up shop all over Oregon.”

Is it just me, or is that ass-backwards? Who does he think currently grows marijuana in Oregon, a several billion dollar a year market? Am I interpreting the law wrong, or aren’t all those growers currently criminals? And if it’s legal, how can a grower be a criminal?

The Sheriff does, though, point to the future in a significant way. There is no doubt that marijuana is one of the top income crops in America. Given its illegality, the futures market on marijuana is not tracked, but, trust me, it’s bullish. It is, at the same time, completely untaxed and unregulated. It’s Prohibition all over again except that people are dying in Mexico because of it, not just Chicago. The money is uncountable. Or, more properly, no one’s counting it.

We should.

Need I say more? Any fool can do the math. Any fool can see the consequences. Any fool.

While we’re diddling around saying we shouldn’t legalize pot because the medical marijuana program is broken—a non sequitur if there ever was one—the opportunity to cash in on the market is dwindling away. Rather than fighting legalization, we should be gearing up for it. It’s going to come one day soon enough, and those places ready to cash in when it comes will be far ahead of the game. Oregon is perfectly placed to capture a major share of that emerging market. But we have to act fast. Washington and Colorado are also on the way to establishing brands. California won’t be far behind. We already have an excellent culinary reputation; we can do the same with cannabis, I guarantee it.

We need a Tilth for the marijuana trade. We need someone certifying growers and product. We need state quality assurance. We need to get a control on the market before it races past us.

The Sheriff should take note of what happened when Prohibition was repealed. Sales shrank, the market constricted for a brief while, anyway. One reason? Kids couldn’t buy booze anymore, the underground market totally dried up. And suddenly the government raked in a bundle of taxes. Wouldn’t that be nice? (Or is that a little too socialistic? Redistribution of the wealth, and all? Why pick on one of the last bastions of free enterprise?)

“Acme Buds: From High in the Mountains of Oregon.” We have to be quick or we’ll be left behind. I know that’s hard for a bunch of pot smokers—to be quick—but it’ll pay off big time.

Get off your duff and vote!

Thanks to sheriffdan10

I’m just saying…

It took me years to get to appreciate the taste of marijuana. The smoke alone nearly killed me. I still don’t like it a whole lot, except that I’ve developed a pavlovian response to it.

In my experience, that’s unique. All those other popular drugs—coffee, alcohol, tobacco, chocolate—all depend, to a large extent, on taste. Think of alcohol alone. The varieties of flavored alcohols must be in the hundreds of thousands: beers, wines, booze, aperitifs, sakes, kumisses. Still, a drunk is a drunk; doesn’t matter which kind of rotgut he (or she) swills, the effect is the same. Alcohol is alcohol. There are claims that some alcohols, like, say, absinthe or champagne, produce highs of differing qualities; but, for the most part, how drunk one gets depends on how much alcohol one consumes. The source is immaterial; a bottle of Oregon pinot noir will get you as snockered as a bottle of Ripple.

The same is true of tobacco. The flavors and strength vary considerably, but the ultimate effect, stupefaction, is the same.

For all I know, that’s true of heroin and cocaine and oxycodone and whatever: how high you get depends on how much you consume.

Not so with marijuana. Indeed, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of varieties of marijuana on the market, and none is quite the same as the other; not just in taste, but in the nature of the high they produce. It’s not simply a matter of quantity. It’s not that each variety of marijuana has X amount of THC and that if you smoke the same amount of THC, regardless of brand, you’ll get the same high. Not so. Each brand, each variety, has its own unique experience.

What you can’t do is smoke a large amount of inferior marijuana to get as high as smoking any amount of a quality marijuana. It just doesn’t work that way. If you want to get high, you have to smoke good reefer; smoking twice as much bad reefer won’t do it. Smoking four times as much won’t do it. Smoke till it’s all gone and it won’t do it. Quantity doesn’t count with marijuana, it’s quality all the way. There is no substitute. Trust me, there are marijuanas out there that I wouldn’t let my dog walk home.

It’s interesting to listen to wine aficionados versus eavesdropping on knowledgeable marijuana smokers. They both use glowing floral, intimate phrases in caressing their passions, but one camp is entirely devoted to the experience of the palate while the other concentrates solely on effects. To be sure, marijuana smokers softly sniff their product and note its its bouquet, and that’s part of the overall experience, but the ultimate test of a marijuana comes, not in the consumption, but in the few seconds afterwards when the combination of resins sneaks into your brain. It’s what marijuana does to you that really matters, not its taste.

Because, truth to tell, tastes can be deceiving. There are marijuanas out there that smell exquisite and burn like heaven but leave you flat as a flitter. Likewise, there are marijuanas out there that smell as dead as a button but have you crawling on your hands and knees looking for the chocolate factory. (“I know I left it here somewhere, God damn it.”)

What we’re seeing in the market now, is a trailer for what’s coming. The rush to legalization through the channel of medical marijuana has already created sea changes in the marijuana business. Not only are prices falling, but quality is stabilizing. Competition in evidenced in the market for the first time on a broad scale. Most marijuana now comes with a name. I’m told that in the clinics the THC percentage is listed (though heed the warning above about THC being only a part of the total package). Expect the push to quality to continue.

Expect that there will be two levels to the legal market: mass and boutique. Expect that it will be regulated like beer: yes, you can grow your own; but if you want to sell it, you’ll have to have a license, pay tax, etc. Expect that the price will fall into a range that won’t make it worthwhile for most people to grow their own dope anymore than to brew their own beer; most people won’t. Expect quality local brands. Expect decent regional/national brands.

God, it would be nice to see this happen before I die. (Hey, don’t laugh!)

Cannabis rex.

Was I Wrong or What?

Can't remember where I put this box.

The Big Oh did run my op-ed piece on legalizing pot. You can see it here.

Gee, thanks, guys. Reading the comments has been entertaining. The question always was, how many fish would I catch?

We Can’t Afford to Legalize Pot

I wrote this in response to an op-ed piece in The Oregonian. Knowing that they'll never publish it, I thought I'd best save the world this way.

Lauren Wiener’s Sunday opinion column in The Big O on legalizing marijuana was well reasoned and sensible. She adequately revealed the limitations of the medical marijuana program. She made a compelling argument for legalization.

Unfortunately, it was beside the point. The war against marijuana was never a public health or safety issue. It isn’t even a moral issue. It is a cultural issue. Marijuana is the drug of choice of the great unwashed bottom-dwellers who drag down society with their devil-may-care, scofflaw attitudes. Artists, musicians, actors, and no end of fringe creative types spend their nights sucking down vast clouds of marijuana smoke while planning the destruction of the American way of life. That’s why we have to prohibit marijuana, it creates disdain for the American political and economic system.

But the real reason to not legalize pot is that we can’t afford it. Anti-pot legislation and enforcement are the cornerstone of our whole incarceration system, which is the largest in the world. Legalizing pot would immediately throw millions of Americans out of work: judges, lawyers, prosecutors, policemen, security guards, bail bondsmen, court reporters, prison guards, parole officers, prison construction personnel, prison commissary operators, media people, not to mention farmers, harvesters, marketers, and transportation folk (should we talk about where all those people shop, buy homes, take vacations, etc?).

Legalizing marijuana would not only suddenly throw those millions of people out of work, it would also immediately throw millions of criminals onto the streets looking for employment. This would put a serious wrench into the economy from which it might take years to recover.

It could also provide a serious crunch in the international arms trade, another business in which we are the world’s largest player. Much of the world’s terrorist arms are purchased with money acquired through drug trade profits maintained artificially high by the drugs’ illegality. Legalizing drugs would tear the pocket book out of those organizations and provide a crimp in arms purchasing which would directly affect the American economy. Much of our foreign aid is determined by keeping those regional conflicts alive. Likewise, the great majority of guns used by the Mexican cartels are made in America. What would happen if they could no longer buy those guns? It’s our industries which would take the hit.

Sure, legalizing pot might get the hippies off our back, but the dismantling of the industries built around criminalization could send the country into a tailspin that would hark back to the 30s. Don’t forget, if America were to legalize pot, the rest of the world would follow suit, only exacerbating the problems. It could plunge the entire world into economic chaos.

The bottom line: we simply can’t afford to legalize marijuana. It’s a pipe dream.

Wish I could credit this excellent photo. Whose ever it is, it's yours.