For the first time in US history, there is a state initiative to legalize marijuana possession, use, and production for all adults: the California Control & Tax Cannabis Initiative, which will appear on the November election ballot as Proposition 19. Unfortunately, there are some "marijuana activists" who are aggressively opposing the brilliant initiative. In this article I will address some of the myths being told about this initiative, and why I fully support it.
But first, let me explain that opponents of Richard Lee's initiative fall into three groups. The first group is the police and prison industry, represented by their unions and spokespeople. These are the system exploiters who have profited greatly and built power bases at the expense of the people. These are our archenemies, people who think it’s okay making a buck by arresting, strip-searching, incarcerating, harassing, and jailing ordinary cannabis consumer and home-growers. They are destroying our constitutional freedoms, seizing our kids, and forcing the cost of marijuana up to immoral prices as part of their love affair with prohibition.
The second group includes the cartels, thugs, street gangs, large commercial growers, commercial medical marijuana growers and their dependents that make exploitative profits taking full advantage of prohibition-inflated prices. They correctly surmise that when every adult in California can make all the homegrown cannabis an individual can produce in 25 square feet, the need for them and their rip-off prices evaporates. Like, gone, baby gone. And with home grows legal, police will target the exploiter large scale grows. Who needs their $350- to $450-per-ounce cannabis when we can all safely and legally grow our own weed at home for about $12.50 an ounce?
The third group is the so-called old guard of the cannabis or medical marijuana movement. The wonderful Proposition-215 pioneer Denis Peron is one, but there are many others. Their opposition is entirely trivial and irrational. It stems from a professional jealousy that a successful, compassionate man like Richard Lee (who has provided over a million dollars of his well-earned money to support this initiative) is doing it without their blessing. No one asked Dennis Peron's permission. Dennis is a hero to the pot movement and has done a great deal to provide marijuana to medical users, but it seems he feels the world of activism has passed him by – because it has, and he's jealous.
Perhaps the most loathsome aspect of this debate is the opposition by those large commercial exploiter growers, cartels, "compassionate" medical growers who charge $3,500 - $4,500 a pound wholesale and profit immensely from prohibition, as they have allied themselves with the most cynical and exploitative members of the prohibitionist regime: the cops and the prison industry. I can expect all of the previously mentioned vested interests to contribute big money to the no campaign, which is tragic and unfortunate. That an elder statesman like Dennis Peron is lending false testimony to this campaign against the greatest anti-prohibition initiative put to voters in US history is a sad state of affairs.
I will go through the points asserted by the naysayers and reveal that all are trivial and irrelevant sham arguments. I will point out that the real issue here is the fear these commercial exploiter growers have that their market will utterly dry up. At $12.50 an ounce for your own homegrown, who will pay their rip-off prices anymore? Almost no one, and this has them rightly panicked. Well, I say screw any greedy growers whose love of money is greater than their love of marijuana, and you should too by voting for THE CONTROL & TAX CANNABIS INITIATIVE this November.
COMPLAINT #1: THIS BILL ISN'T REALLY LEGALIZATION
Proposition 215, passed by California voters in November 1996, did not change medical marijuana laws federally, but it was still the most significant ballot initiative in the history of
