Jim Finnel
Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex News Moderator
While a proposal to track medical marijuana sales is far from being the unreasonable intrusion critics are making it out to be, the notion certainly points out how arcane the country’s anti-marijuana laws are.
An Associated Press story on Wednesday spelled out how state officials hope to monitor who’s buying medical marijuana and just how much. Some officials say they believe that some patients are buying up large quantities of pot and then selling it on the black market.
At this point, there’s really no way of knowing that. With the prolific number of medical marijuana dispensaries, it would be difficult to track such sales even with a control system.
Such regulated sales aren’t the beginning of some new era of Big Brother snooping. Registry of guns and other controlled substances and devices are long standing.
Medical patients currently can’t drag a single prescription for Vicodin from pharmacy to pharmacy, collecting huge quantities of the narcotic for personal use or to sell on the black market. There should be no expectation from medical marijuana users that their medicine should be treated any differently.
But since there is no agreed upon way of how to prescribe marijuana, it’s difficult to find an easy way to control and limit its sale to individual patients.
While video taping would do little to halt unscrupulous sales but only allow for prosecution after the fact, it makes more sense to use some kind of database that records the amount of medical marijuana purchased by a cardholder.
More to the point, this and other problems medical marijuana programs keep turning up make it clear that the age of marijuana prohibition needs to come to an end.
Each week, this burgeoning industry and the horrific news coming out of Mexico, where drug gangs continue to slaughter endless number of people over illegal marijuana sales to the United States, only highlight the obvious: it’s time to legalize and regulate the substance.
The United States spends more than $40 billion a year on uselessly trying to stop drugs from entering the country, stop people here from using them and warehousing those that are caught with them. Meanwhile, the illegal $400-billion-a-year industry grows each year as thousands of people die from thug fights in Mexico and other Latin American countries.
It’s a scourge unlike any other in our part of the world.
No one is asking for the United States to stand back and allow for a free-for-all in drug trade, but, clearly, current U.S. drug policy is beyond dysfunctional; it’s a major part of the problem.
Regulate these medicinal sales now, and then follow California’s lead toward decriminalization after that.
NewsHawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: Aurora Sentinel
Author: Editorial
Copyright: 2010 Aurora Sentinel
Contact: Aurora Sentinel: Contact
Website: EDITORIAL: Time for marijuana to be legalized, regulated - Aurora Sentinel: Hp Editorials
An Associated Press story on Wednesday spelled out how state officials hope to monitor who’s buying medical marijuana and just how much. Some officials say they believe that some patients are buying up large quantities of pot and then selling it on the black market.
At this point, there’s really no way of knowing that. With the prolific number of medical marijuana dispensaries, it would be difficult to track such sales even with a control system.
Such regulated sales aren’t the beginning of some new era of Big Brother snooping. Registry of guns and other controlled substances and devices are long standing.
Medical patients currently can’t drag a single prescription for Vicodin from pharmacy to pharmacy, collecting huge quantities of the narcotic for personal use or to sell on the black market. There should be no expectation from medical marijuana users that their medicine should be treated any differently.
But since there is no agreed upon way of how to prescribe marijuana, it’s difficult to find an easy way to control and limit its sale to individual patients.
While video taping would do little to halt unscrupulous sales but only allow for prosecution after the fact, it makes more sense to use some kind of database that records the amount of medical marijuana purchased by a cardholder.
More to the point, this and other problems medical marijuana programs keep turning up make it clear that the age of marijuana prohibition needs to come to an end.
Each week, this burgeoning industry and the horrific news coming out of Mexico, where drug gangs continue to slaughter endless number of people over illegal marijuana sales to the United States, only highlight the obvious: it’s time to legalize and regulate the substance.
The United States spends more than $40 billion a year on uselessly trying to stop drugs from entering the country, stop people here from using them and warehousing those that are caught with them. Meanwhile, the illegal $400-billion-a-year industry grows each year as thousands of people die from thug fights in Mexico and other Latin American countries.
It’s a scourge unlike any other in our part of the world.
No one is asking for the United States to stand back and allow for a free-for-all in drug trade, but, clearly, current U.S. drug policy is beyond dysfunctional; it’s a major part of the problem.
Regulate these medicinal sales now, and then follow California’s lead toward decriminalization after that.
NewsHawk: User: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: Aurora Sentinel
Author: Editorial
Copyright: 2010 Aurora Sentinel
Contact: Aurora Sentinel: Contact
Website: EDITORIAL: Time for marijuana to be legalized, regulated - Aurora Sentinel: Hp Editorials
