What Happened When The Liberals Legalized Weed
It was a half-measure
1. It put me out of a job…
;-) Don’t worry, it wasn’t my main thing…but it wasn’t just a job!
2. It turned it into a landowner’s game…
People used to sell weed to make rent, and not get evicted — now, you need a storefront before you can even apply for a dispensary license — this process thereby exacerbated the evictions crisis and destroyed ‘independent business’*
3. It drove persistent dealers to sell harder drugs…
… if only safe drugs are legal, only harder drugs will be profitable to dealers** — I have witnessed this second-hand in my neighborhood: there is the same amount of fully black-market drug trade, but now none of it is weed, and much of it is opioids … so legalizing weed selectively exacerbated overdose deaths. Those who stayed in the business moved to selling harder drugs.
4. It distracted you from the lack of voting reform…
Happy 4/20 everyone; the fight for universal drug legalization, another form of ‘Your Body, Your Choice’ is far from over. Freedom of Association is also threatened by the absence of weed lounges, while the take-home product is readily available — who wants peaceniks organizing? It would be like Rochdale College all over again — whatever you do, don’t let those dirty socialist Hippies communicate! Give them a nice capitalist product sold by landowners…
PS I am a second-generation Hippie and my mother lived in Rochdale College…she was there the final night the building was raided. The statue of the “Unknown Student” outside the former building, where we canvassed recently, remains a powerful pacifist statement.
*I used to joke “What do Lockdowns and Legal Weed Have in Common? They both destroy small business!”
**The same issue applies with big pharma: Because prescriptions, and intellectual property, are required for permission to use drugs, this creates a system of artificial scarcity which renders prescription drugs artificially profitable, which renders the industry artificially corrupt… ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY IS WRONG, PRIMA FACIE, PEOPLE!
(And Capitalism Inherently Overprescribes Everything.)
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VOTE EARLY for adamgolding.ca in University—Rosedale @ 2 BLOOR ST WEST