Oh, No – The Demon Weed!!!
United For Care is a Florida group lobbying for medical marijuana in Florida. They have had no luck with the Florida legislature, so they have turned to the petition process to get it on the ballot.
Having declined to bring it up in the legislature, the Legivermins [the larval stage of Congresscritter] are attacking the petition’s purpose and intent. According to UFC, House Speaker Will Weatherford said the amendment would put “marijuana shops on every corner”.
I guess no one has told him that that is the current system of distribution the illegal product. Medical marijuana requires a doctor’s prescription, not just a note from the US Treasury.
Actually medical marijuana would create a lot of jobs in Florida, because the Feds prohibit it moving across state lines. The marijuana would have to be grown, processed, and dispensed within the state, with cheap foreign imports totally illegal. Medical marijuana has to be of a known and consistent potency, like any other drug, so this is not something for a couple of ‘Dead heads to try in a hidden patch of a state or national forest. I can imagine that it will initially be a green house operation for both control and security.
The state controls will probably be similar to those for distilleries with everyone involved having to submit to background checks to keep out the criminal element.
Just legalizing marijuana would be a better move, as you could tax the hell out of it, significantly reduce the load on courts and prisons, and hurt the drug cartels – what’s not to like?
6 comments
Yes, the legal stuff is grown indoors in greenhouses for better control of lighting, humidity, and water. And I’m all for it because legal growhouses are some of our best customers for our video surveillance monitoring system because it’s a new industry and the kind of people who start up legal growhouses generally aren’t very security-savvy thus are willing to pay folks like us for our expertise :).
I can see why they want security, because medical marijuana is a very large target for people in the ‘recreational’ side of the business. Charlie Bronson, our last state agricultural commissioner included marijuana in his reports on Florida farm crops. He was a Republican, but he was also a farmer, so his attitude was that it was a major crop that generated a lot of money in the state, so it had to be reported on.
There is a lot of scientific evidence about the beneficial effects in the treatment of a number of conditions, so it is dumb not acknowledge reality, and cruel not to make it available to people who need it.
Frankly, anything that generates some economic activity should be welcome at this point. Gay marriage and marijuana are winners on that basis alone.
The laws regulating medical marijuana generally mandate a *lot* of security to avoid the demon weed getting into the hands of those too stupid to find a physician willing to write a prescription for medical marijuana as treatment for a hangnail. One customer I’m thinking of has more cameras than an entire high school / middle school complex for just one growhouse and one warehouse, they’re all over the inside to make sure workers don’t sneak out with freebies and all over the outside to make sure there’s not potheads trying to break in. He’s already talking to us about buying more storage and another server to monitor a second growhouse that’s under construction.
I’m all for generating economic activity. Especially if it results in money in my own pocket :).
Yes, Badtux, it helps you, but as a Jeep owner you will spreading it far a wide and generating income for a lot more people. The important thing is that you are spending it and not sticking in your mattress [while in your mattress or mine, it could well become paper cat litter].
Demand is what we need, as we both know.
JEEP stands for Just Empty Every Pocket, of course :). Yeah, I’m dumping $3K into new 35″ tires, new alloy 8.5×17 wheels (the OEM wheels are too narrow for the big tars), and assorted other things needed to make the tires actually fit, thanks to some good news I got on the financial side of things. Jeeps are like a Toledo whore, rough and scuzzy and high maintenance and a fun ride :twisted:.
But anyhow, like you, I’m all for anything that generates economic activity. The more, the merrier. But we all know what’s really needed — to tax those giant piles of cash that the rich have stashed under their mattresses — isn’t going to happen. Sigh. So it goes.
So you figured out the problem with the tire pressure sensors? In the old days it would have taken me seconds to tell you the frequency thanks to the toys the Air Force let me play with, but those suckers are expensive. A good electronic repair shop should be able to work it out since the sensors are transmitters and the possible frequencies are known, but you have to take them off to find out.
Inflation is the only thing that will move the ‘mattress money’ and the only way of generating inflation is to increase demand and put people back to work building stuff.
The people in power have no idea how the economy works. They simply don’t know and believe every witch doctor who strolls onto the scene and says something that justifies the selfish attitudes of the Very Serious People.