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Industrial Marijuana Farming Approved In Oakland
Trintech writes "According to MSNBC: 'The city of Oakland, California on Tuesday legalized large-scale marijuana cultivation for medical use and will issue up to four permits for "industrial" cultivation starting next year.
The move by the San Francisco Bay Area city aims to bring medical marijuana cultivation into the open and allow the city to profit by taxing those who grow it.
The resolution passed the city council easily after a nearly four-hour debate that pitted small-scale "garden" growers against advocates of a bigger, industrial system that would become a "Silicon Valley" of pot.' Yes, you read that right. MSNBC just compared computer chip fabrication to pot cultivation."
As someone who grew up in Northern California proper (and now lives in Silicon Valley), I must protest. We already have our "Silicon Valley" of maryjane -- it's called the Emerald Triangle. Not to mention, my county has already decriminalized cultivation of the good herb (grep for "Measure G"), at least for personal use.
Although, it would be illegal to grow GMO weed there (search for "Measure H").
The difference is that you can have it for whatever reason you want. In the US, as an individual, you have to get a prescription for it from your doctor.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Don't move yet. The USA at the federal government level doesn't approve of this (though they are currently turning an INFORMAL blind eye to it), and may well jail anyone who actually tries to run an industrial scale marijuana farm.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I have multiple friends who brew their own beer, and I can tell you that it is a lot more complicated than growing a plant.
Compared to taxes? Are you crazy?
That is a one time thing, this is on going income.
What you say is somewhat true. Fortunately smoking is not the only way (or the best way) to consume Cannabis. You can vaporize, which involves no smoke or carcinogenic tars or you can cook it any number of ways.
Brownies, cookies and other baked goods. Maybe even a tossed salad with a garnish of buds. Smoking and inhaling is totally not required. For those who are worried about adverse effects of smoking on health, ingestion should do just fine.
That doesn't matter according to the current interpretation of the interstate commerce clause.
The production and sale of pot in California affects the supply and demand within the state, and therefore affects the interstate illegal trade of pot.
It is the same reason that the interstate commerce clause can be used to jail you for building your own automatic weapon. Because by building it yourself, you didn't buy it from a hypothetical supplier that may have been in another state.
Insane? Absolutely. But that is how things work these days.
but interstate commerce is domain of the federal government. Pot growing and sale is interstate commerce even if it doesn't leave the state it was grown in. Gonzalez v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005). An enumerated right does not mean that what is being regulated is specifically stated in the Constitution. That is, you cannot say that the federal government cannot regulate drugs, because it does not specifically say they can regulate drugs in the Constitution.
And it is not in the Constitution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness
If it has to be "medicine" for "sick people" then so be it; eventually it'll be legal and commercialized.
During prohibition they had the same loophole - you could get a prescription for alcohol for medicinal purposes.
Walgreens went from ~10 stores to ~400 stores during the decade of prohibition and it wasn't by selling milkshakes.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Ayep. Read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
This decision was one of the most dispiriting things about law skool.
Legal pot states
http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000881
1. Alaska 98 1 oz usable; 6 plants (3 mature, 3 immature)
2. California 96 8 oz usable; 18 plants (6 mature, 12 immature)**
3. Colorado 00 2 oz usable; 6 plants (3 mature, 3 immature)
4. Hawaii
5. Maine
6. Michigan
7. Montana
8. Nevada
9. New Jersey
10. New Mexico
11. Oregon
12. Rhode Island
13. Vermont
14. Washington
Several recently (2006-2010) so it is probably gaining momentum.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
All jokes aside, commercial hemp has more applications then just narcotics/psychoactive.
Fibres from the marijuana plant produce a material stronger then cotton at a much lower cost to produce (faster growth time, higher yield per plant, able to withstand harsher environmental conditions) thus you have to oft quoted stoner conspiracy that the anti-weed movement was sponsored by America's cotton growers.
Psychological and physiological health issues are shown to be less then that of legal Alcohol and Tobacco. With Marijuana smoke carrying considerably less carcinogens then tobacco smoke, although I'd definitely be behind a dont bong and drive campaign as reaction times are slowed down more then when using alcohol.
I'd also like the US to stop pushing drug laws on other nations. I'd like a "happy" pizza in Cambodia.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Taxation will only get so far based on the Laffer curve
Yep... to add to this, though, AFAIK studies that have been done indicate that the maximum is well to the right (higher taxation) side of where the U.S. gov't has tax rates now...
Fibres from the marijuana plant produce a material stronger then cotton at a much lower cost to produce (faster growth time, higher yield per plant, able to withstand harsher environmental conditions) thus you have to oft quoted stoner conspiracy that the anti-weed movement was sponsored by America's cotton growers.
I believe it was Hearst, and the soft pulp wood guys who were often seen as starting the "reefer madness" not the cotton growers.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.