I take a lot of heat from people who support medical marijuana because I criticize its worst abuses. Particularly, the emergence of some in the medical marijuana industry dedicated to self-preservation by opposing marijuana legalization. But until now, this Fifth Column of self-criminalizing pot smokers has offered their aid and comfort to the enemy indirectly.
I’m proud to stand with medical marijuana advocates against Prop 64! We can agree on this! @SafeAccess @Weed4Warriors https://t.co/sxuzVaAz2T
— Kevin Sabet (@KevinSabet) October 27, 2016
Yesterday, medical marijuana advocates and industry members stood onstage with Kevin Sabet, a man who believes “smoked marijuana is not medicine“, a man who would repeal Prop 215 if he could, a man who actually is the one who wants to turn over medical cannabis to Big Pharma, and expressed their united opposition to California’s Adult Use of Marijuana Act.
Last year there were nearly 9,000 felony marijuana arrests in California. Proposition 64 amends the punishment for most felony cultivation and sales crimes down to misdemeanors retroactively (see section 11362.8). That means people who are felons today, whether they’re sitting in a prison now, currently on probation and parole, or they even served their time long ago, will no longer be felons and, if still jailed, will be eligible for early release.
So if you know someone in California who has a felony record for marijuana, sitting in a prison right now, who will face the hardship of having “convicted drug felon” on their record when trying to get a job, a house, a scholarship, financial aid, security clearances, child custody, purchasing a firearm, and so on, send them this San Francisco Chronicle article, “Strange bedfellows unite to oppose California pot legalization,” and have them focus on the picture of the people standing with Kevin Sabet who thought freeing that felon and/or expunging their felony record by passing Prop 64 was a bridge too far, because it upset their medical marijuana apple cart.
You could have them focus on Jamie Kerr. She’s the blonde lady who runs 530 Collective and currently sells top-shelf cannabis for $13 a gram ($369 an ounce). Let your friend with the felony record know that they need to remain a felon because clearing their record would mean competition for her weed shop.
I’m not putting words in her mouth. From the article:
“Let’s face it, the marijuana business doesn’t have the best reputation,” said Kerr, who conceded that new recreational competition could harm her business. “There are a lot of problems with rushing through recreational before we have answers to a lot of the questions we have now.”
Standing alongside Sabet and Kerr was Sean Kiernan, the head of Weed for Warriors. Keirnan, whose group utilizes Prop 215 to give marijuana to veterans with PTSD, standing alongside a man whose organization says “Current medical marijuana programs are a joke“. Assisting a man who called the DEA’s recent decision to keep marijuana in Schedule I “a vindication for science.” Allying with a man whose organization calls for “The end of ‘cannabis clubs’ and so-called ‘dispensaries’ that are fronts for marijuana stores and do not follow appropriate standards of medical care.”
For twenty years, these patients have been protected from law enforcement. Meanwhile, the rest of us “criminals” who voted for their medical-marijuana initiatives have been the cannon fodder in the Drug War. People like Kerr have been given a lucrative industry protected from competition, insulated from regulation and taxation, and subsidized mightily by the prohibition risk tariff. Meanwhile, we tokers who helped make that possible still must meet “the guy” in a parking lot to get our weed. These medical-marijuana providers were some of the loudest voices of opposition in 2010, when the first attempt in 28 years in California to begin the ending of prohibition, Prop 19, was defeated.
And now, they’re so desperate to maintain their oligopoly on marijuana in the face of 55 to 60 percent polling that they prostrate themselves before a man who says “medical marijuana is a big fat headache that serves no one but people who just want to get high.” They’re eager to be used as public relations props by a man who thinks “medical” marijuana is dangerous, so epileptic children should have to wait for the FDA to approve cannabidiol oil. They’re oblivious to the fact that their ally in realpolitik would have armor-clad, well-armed DEA agents break down their doors, destroy their businesses, and lock them up for years.
You lie down with dogs, you’re bound to get fleas.
In 1971, President Nixon declared a world war on marijuana consumers that continues to this day. This election, Nov. 8, 2016, is our D-Day, Prop 64 is our Normandy Beach, and these traitors are directly supporting Field Marshall Von Runstedt. I will never forget this betrayal, this treachery, this abominable support for our number one enemy.
Mark my words, after Prop 64 passes, those medical-marijuana advocates standing alongside Sabet who are so morally opposed to legalization will be some of the first to try to profit from this legal market they opposed. They won’t get my weed dollars, though. They will get a whole lot of my attention. Their appeasement of the enemy will be long-remembered and oft-repeated.
Don’t miss Russ’s previous Radical Rant: Guess What Precious Metal Cannabis Is Most Like
