Stung by costs, some of Minnesota’s medical marijuana patients back to buying on streets
As we’ve often said here, the vast majority of people prefer to buy legally if they can, and are generally willing to even pay a little more to do so. But when the cost is excessive, it forces the user to choose between poverty and breaking the law.
“What we’re talking about is an expensive designer drug that only the rich can afford right now.”
That’s unacceptable.
Southern Oregon is in the same boat, as so many towns and counties have preemptively banned MJ dispensaries that travelling to Eugene or Portland might be a necessity, like getting an abortion in Texas. There’s no use in a state measure that legalizes dope only in theory with so many “dry counties” around. Lawsuits to the rescue? Not yet.
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“The federal government might someday relax its stance on marijuana” this phrase from the article is the reason these patients are circumventing the law. you can’t wait for the government to get off it’s corrupt ass when you are in pain or having seizures. only a simpleton would obey the aristos when medical necessity dictates otherwise.
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[…] Medical marijuana must be cost effective « Drug WarRant […]
Prohibition Mark II – this is what happens when you compromise with people who are WRONG – the Prohibitionists.
Washington State is a case in point – the new law actually re-criminalizes people who are currently operating within the law – insults patients by taxing their medicine (the only medicine taxed in the State) at 37% and reducing the number of plants they can grow to 4 (or 6 if they submit to a central registry which is illegal under HIPAA).
Why is law enforcement with their 70-year failed policy even at the table? They are so wrong on every level – and patients are the victims of this political shitshow.
Prohibition is a criminal regime and prohibitionists are criminals. Period.
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Jeez, what can anyone expect from prohibitionist contractors with proudly displayed biases, the kind who scribble their ‘best’ work on the backs of envelopes,?
Especially when they are hired to set up a legal cannabis market by prohib legislators trying to strangle said market in the crib?
As to the issue of law enforcement being at the table, they should be standing in front of it, not sitting at it. Public servants giving themselves ‘aires’, thinking they are ‘stakeholders’, forgetting that above all they are employees.
If what I think might happen sometime later this year (google dollar devaluation) does happen, all this may become moot. If Gub’mint at all levels is forced to severely contract, courtesy of a projected economic meltdown worse than 2008, cannabis prohibition will become a very small concern indeed as issues of national (and civil) survival will become paramount.The need for tax revenues will overshadow any particular minority’s monomaniacal neuroses about ‘evil herbs’.
As CO and WA are proving, when the (legal cannabis market) money talks, the BS of prohibition walks. Prohibition is being forced to walk when it used to ride in style, and those fancy shoes provided on a prohib’s salary aren’t much good when you’ve been handed your ‘marching orders’.
Should we have another meltdown, as is very likely, cannabis prohibition will not only be ‘shown to the door’, not only ‘kicked to the curb’, but bodily thrown in the dumpster out back.
It was said all along: Follow the money. Prohibition was always a ‘rich man’s hobby’, dependent upon ‘disposable income’ that produced nothing tangible but the instruments of oppression, from handcuff keys to prisons. Prohibition from a cost/benefit analysis always was a drain on the taxpayers and a waste of their dollars.
Well, we ain’t rich, anymore. We can’t afford this sick ‘hobby’ any longer. A point our legislators need to be made aware of, incessantly.
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I thought I already posted something about this but it must have been back aways if I did, cuz I couldn’t find it. I posted this link http://q13fox.com/2015/09/18/new-side-effect-of-washingtons-marijuana-law-youth-possession-now-a-felony/
to my FB page because I was outraged by it. So outraged I wrote to the 18 state legislators for whom I have email addys:
The Sen mentioned in the article responded:
I wrote back:
She answered immediately:
But notice she said nothing about the prosecutor.
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this just in: fatties still popular at high elevations. http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/colorados-marijuana-tax-revenues-nearly-double-last-years-figures/
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Speaking of fatties, hope you have a nice harvest.
so far, so good
Uphere, it’s neen a stellar year. Perfect (if a little dry) conditions. But a wind storm and sudden change in conditions has people scrambling to prevent mold and get thier plants in. But it is gonna be a good year.
too soon to say with 2 weeks to go but it is looking good, monsoon or no
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debauchery de la blighty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unWDCFzf5cY
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Well, he is a regular at Bilderberg and attends the Bohemian Grove.
But Cameron is also under fire for the Kengate Tapes.
The handmaidens of the Elite are as sick as their masters.
If you’ve ever wondered why so few world leaders ever step out of line and bite the hand of their hidden masters, then you have to deduce that blackmail is a powerful weapon of the Elite to keep their (as they used to say in Alabama) hired he’p in line.
And of course, if a gentle reminder isn’t enough, there’s always the Dallas 1963 Solution.
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I live about 20-minutes from the Bohemian Grove. Every year the private jets of these dick heads causes significant air traffic and noise pollution over my house.
Kap, I’ve been looking into “dollar devaluation.” Not sure I’ve found anything other than nutcase’s so far.
For example, Kennedy was killed because he wanted to put the U.S. back on Silver Certificates, OR that a “micro-nuke” was used on 9/11 on the WTC.
Who would you recommend as a good source of info?
NorCalNative
The best people I have found on the Web who can describe this better than I can would be Jim Rickards, Peter Schiff, and Mike Maloney. Do a YouTube search, then refine the results by setting the Filter button to ‘Today’. You’ll find a lot of weeks-old stuff being published, the same interviews repeated several times, but a sampling of those videos will give you the gist of it.
They do a better job of explaining the actual process, but it goes something like this: print too much paper money, and you cause hyperinflation. Before that, you get a deflation, where the dollar is devalued to cheapen it so that US exports will be more attractive. This is known as ‘beggar-thy-neighbor’. And it usually leads to wars.
Countries get caught in a vicious cycle to compete with every other country’s now devalued currency. The result is usually disastrous for folks like you and me.
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Peter Schiff has been beating that drum for at least 25 years that I can recall, and so far he has been wrong more than he has been right. Remember, economists have predicted 13 of the last 3 recessions.
And to illustrate just how important it is, we have this, today:
Soros, Icahn And Major New Players Rushing Into Gold
When the Big Money Boyz start ‘duck and cover’ maneuvers and draw money out of stocks and put it into gold, the fecal matter is about the hit the ventilator.
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Primus, the only reason why the collapse hadn’t happened is because of all the ‘stimulus’ we’ve had.
‘Stimulus’ like the wars. As one creep in Michael Moore’s movie Fahrenheit 9/11 put it in a sing-songy way, “Good for bus-ness, bad for the peo-ple…”
Even before the guys I mentioned, there was Dr. Ravi Batra. He warned decades ago what would happen with all the mergers of the 1980’s and 1990’s placing too much economic power in the hands of too few, and a single greed-fueled (and maybe cocaine-fueled) screw-up by one of them could bring down the whole system.
Which very nearly happened in 2008 with Lehman Brothers, and would have gone further. Again, the insane polices of the Fed and all the military spending before is what kept things artificially propped-up.
(And the dollar being the world reserve currency didn’t hurt, like the old Dire Straits song went “Money for nothing…” since it wasn’t backed by anything, the Fed went crazy and printed too much paper money.) The market correction would have come much sooner for that. And almost did in 2008.
What the Fed did back then in 2008 was put a band-aid on a sucking chest wound, and the band-aid is wearing off. No proper means of caring for the wound has been produced. And they used up all the left-over band-aids.
There’s lots more voices sounding the same warnings, (and who don’t have any commercial dogs in the fight) than Schiff’s. I’m quite happy to let the readers decide as to the validity of their positions. I only ask that they be given a hearing.
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Don’t forget Ron Paul who has been preaching against the fed since before he ran for president under the LP banner. Here’s a link to one of this videos predicting a lot of what has already happened to our country and the world due to the fed gov’s policies, and the fed’s policies. He has tried many times when he was in congress to get the fed audited, which he expected would lead to its downfall, apparently Rand just reintroduced that legislation (he also introduced the “Read the Bills Act” written by DownsizeDC, he should have introduced at the same time the “Write the Bills Act” and the “One Subject at a Time Act” also written by DownsizeDC, those three acts would absolutely alter the ability of congress to bury us in legislation they don’t even understand themselves).
Windy, I didn’t mean to leave Dr. Paul out. On the contrary.
But I have noticed an unreasoning bias against him by many so-called ‘progressives’, a knee-jerk reaction against anything smacking of fiscal responsibility, such as he had been promoting for decades.
I have spent a lot of time on so-called ‘progressive’ sites, and have seen that pattern again and again. The word ‘libertarianism’ is an epithet to them, yet it is the basis for all our (supposed) freedoms. The very word sends so-called ‘progressives’ into foaming, mad-dog rhetorical fits. It’s nothing short of Pavlovian.
Such a mind that has derided the basic principles of the freedom that lets them do so in public with no cost to them whatsoever, is indicative of how far the rot of Statism has infected what proclaims itself to be the intellectual class of the country. To paraphrase Franklin, they gave up freedom for fiscal ‘security’ promised by The State, and received neither.
Most such people would rather hear from their portfolio managers than Dr. Paul. Whom they derided for defending their liberties while trying to preserve their purchasing power through fiscal restraint.
Any wonder why the country is screwed up?
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Sounds like this program is working perfectly, exactly as intended. Virtually every legislature-passed mmj program in the country was set up to be as minimally effective as possible. These types of programs are nothing more than check boxes for politicians, so they don’t have to answer annoying questions. “Medical marijuana? We have a program, so stop asking.” High prices, low or no availability, hoops to jump through, small list of qualifying conditions, limited strains/potency/ways to consume. Those are the hallmarks of mmj programs passed by state legislatures. And I believe they are all currently working as planned, with few to no patients being helped.
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This is why I keep saying that a filtering out of real ‘stakeholders’ from the sabotage-minded public servants is needed when any cannabis-related issue is being decided. The latter have proven they will do all they can to maim the legislative baby in the crib so it can’t walk right in implementation.
The latter group have been giving themselves aires and thinking they belong seated at a table they should be standing in front of. It’s long past time to remind them that since they receive a paycheck from those they seek to control, they are completely out of line.
No legalization initiative or MMJ policy should be supported that does not allow home grows,,,period,,that way the home grows will keep the market prices competing for customers. As greed sets in more people will grow their own.
I have no intention of ever paying taxes to any government.state or federal after 47 years of the government’s foot on my neck but do not rule it out,,if the retail price is low enough to make growing more work than it is worth which no politico controlled market has achieved so far.
$2 per gram indoor grow costs will require $5 grams for me to try it.
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Nothing, and I mean NOTHING I have seen in the State stores even comes close to the quality of my homegrown. Hands down. Aroma, taste, potency, bag appeal, I have yet to see anything close to good enough to supplant my garden. Not yet. I’ll keep my mind open, but I ain’t switching anytime soon.
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Your post reminded me of something. Back in the early 1970’s I recall seeing a cartoon of the Mary Jane candy girl in an edition of The Connoisseur’s Handbook of Marijuana with the caption reading, Mary Jane says: “Plant your seeds. Keep prices down.”
Economically sage advice, no matter what era.
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Yes producing your own if you enjoy it is the best way to procure your favourite herb. I have always been self sufficient in that regard however I like strong sativas which are a pain to grow with their longer flowering times,lower yield and stretching tendencies so I buy sativas from a dispensary and grow my own indica dominant strains.
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[…] Prompted by “Medical marijuana must be cost effective”: http://www.drugwarrant.com/2015/09/medical-marijuana-must-be-cost-effective/ […]
PROPAGANDA ALERT: Man claims he killed his wife due to marijuana infused insanity. Yeah, right.
Remember the infamous Twinkie defense used by Dan White’s lawyers to claim White was assassinated San Francisco Mayor Mosconi and Supervisor Harvey Milk because of a sugar psychosis? Well, we’re about to see a lot of extremely stupid psychopaths who believe they can outsmart a murder conviction by feigning weirdness through ingesting cannabinoids and then committing a crime. Marijuana, sinful plant that it’s alleged to be, as well as other drugs, are typically treated as scapegoats for undesirable behavior acted out by real criminals, or real politicians.
It’s unfortunate people exist whose disgraceful actions make drugs look bad. It’s also unfortunate that prohibitionists will now pick up on the murder story and use it to claim marijuana leads to homicide and other crimes.
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Shades of Anslinger’s ‘dog doctor’ and his testimony of growing six inch fangs and flying like a vampire bat around his room after ingesting, leading murderers in the 1930’s and ’40’s to claim cannabis-fueled insanity.
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”. Nothing really changes, just the actors on the stage, and maybe a few props.
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Of the 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88% were for simply having marijuana. ACLU
So then the 8.2 million arrested for marijuana should be able to have their records expunged if they plead diminished responsibility for their crimes, of possessing cannabis.
Admitting to marijuana use became a popular way of avoiding conscription, and murderers cited the brainwashing powers of “an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality and death” to plead diminished responsibility for their crimes. Their claims were frequently supported by an expert witness, the pharmacologist Dr James Munch, who claimed that “after two puffs on a marijuana cigarette, I was turned into a bat”. Sentences were commuted from death to imprisonment on Munch’s evidence, and Anslinger had to ask him to stop testifying.
‘After Two Puffs, I Was Turned Into a Bat’
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/16/thread16685.shtml
Pot Turns Man Into Bat
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/15/thread15947.shtml
Marijuana Laws Are ‘Complete Lunacy’
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/24/thread24544.shtml
I have conversed with several candy makers in the industry and all report candy is very hard to make with cannabis and not have it turn out mostly THCA,,non-activated THC that is still good medicine but not much buzz,,,gummy bears being one of the most difficult.
I am sure some are activating the THC prior to cooking the candies so the THC is fully carbonized and that prolly explains why some candies rip you and others don’t.
Even cannabutter is not fully activated and the top cooks say bake your buds for 30 minutes at 240 degrees on a baking sheet,,then make your butter for fully activated butter.(will be trying this next batch)
Because everyone is not following a standardized method of extraction and activation of the THC it makes it a hit and miss over ingestion problem.
I think standardization is just as important in a regulated market as in the MMJ markets.
Just can’t get two cooks,,two growers or two stoners to agree on the best way to do anything.
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I tried baking the buds in the oven but it didn’t seem to make any difference. I heat my coconut oil or olive oil infusions for eight hours in a warming crock pot. I do add some lecithin to increase the absorption rate by increasing the fat content. There may be better methods but I’m happy with the results..both taste and potency.
The fats retain the terpenes well.
Washington Marijuana Legalization Side Effect:
3 Teens Face 5 Years In Jail For Possesion
DEA Chief Admits Marijuana Is Less Dangerous Than Heroin,
But Won’t Reschedule
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‘“If we come up with a medical use for it, that would be wonderful. But we haven’t,” declared Chuck Rosenberg, the acting head of the Drug Enforcement Agency, in a Sept. 5 interview with Fox News.”‘
Get that “If WE come up…” Not if trained medical staff come up, but WE, the DEA. Of course, as WE are not looking for a medical use, in fact we are doing our level best to hide any and all evidence of medical benefits, this seems unlikely to ever happen. Oh, and Chuck’s qualifications for holding this medical opinion? You guessed it, a law degree.
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“No one deserves to be judged, persecuted, shamed or punished for wanting pain relief from a legal, safe medicine.
We are calling on all members of Shadow Mountain Medical Society, National Access Cannabis, Leafly, the Cannabis Buyers Club of Canada, CANLIO, Cannabis Digest, the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries and anyone else who wants to end of persecution of Medical Cannabis prescribed patients. We have a unified group in boycotting all Nevada State Athletic events until they drop the punishment and fine, and allow an exemption for prescribed medical cannabis patients.”
http://tinyurl.com/qb9jm5d
“Mr. President, together with their fellow citizens, American Catholics are committed to building a society which is truly tolerant and inclusive, to safeguarding the rights of individuals and communities, and to rejecting every form of unjust discrimination.” Pope Frankie.
Unless of course the discrimination is applied to drug-taking hippies and brown people…. they deserve everything they get. (Good grief).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pope-francis-address-at-the-white-house_5602b054e4b0fde8b0d08660
A prohibitionist with violent tendencies is in a New York jail on charges of assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
The reason for the arrest is that Mr. Juan Lopez came home and found his son smoking marijuana, so like any good prohibitionist father, Juan hit his son over the head with a frying pan.
Juan Lopez, it seems, is a NYPD school safety agent.
Jeez, I never though someone would take those egg-frying “this is your brain on drugs” commercials so literally.
Wow, the potential hypocrisy here is palpable…