Dispensary Misuse

Misuse comes up all the time in regards to medical marijuana dispensaries but I ask you who does not also attribute misuse to liquor stores? We don’t talk about closing them down or banning them, or limiting the number. Who does not also attribute the Aurora tragedy to weapon’s misuse? We argue gun control versus the second amendment with great fervor and get nowhere.

You’ve allowed your minds to be tainted by the stigma you’ve given us. I can say ‘liquor store’ in a disparaging way and rattle off a list of general crimes that COULD occur at liquor stores and yet no one will be on my side in wishing to ban them or push them away from schools. It’s a free country, proponents will say, the liquor stores are a symbol of that. But now that the drug is marijuana and not alcohol, suddenly everything has changed. Liquor stores were allowed the cultural shift in your minds; allow dispensaries that same perspective change.

The scenario is often pitched, how many dispensaries in an area are there then compare that to the number of pharmacy stores. Some how this is an argument against dispensaries but no one asks how many liquor stores are in those districts as well and those are ‘bad’ too; you don’t even need extra permission from a licensed medical professional, you just need a government issued ID. Getting marijuana requires extra checks but what do you care about safety really; you just hate who we are.

Whether you know it or not, we all know someone who has used, is using, or will use marijuana; how can you continue to shout in our face your demands while allowing hypocrisies to spring up like weeds using your very own arguments. 

Cultural Shift

I was at the Los Angeles City Hall to speak on the medicalmarijuana dispensary ban proposal. I see a large cultural shift happening; there is a segment of the population prepared for it and desiring it. Then there’s another segment fighting fiercely and hoping it will just go away. I will tell you that it will not simply go away.

Dispensaries are businesses; we seem to forget that frequently. What this means is, someone or a few people talked to landlords, filled out paperwork, obtained competitive merchandise, advertized, bought containers, bags, showcases, refrigerators and the countless other resources you need to run a good business. The government then finds that these business cannot be for profit but this is an impossible demand. No physical structure, no product, no rent can paid in any other way than with money. If you continually lose money or break even, your business will eventually go under as you suddenly find yourself unable to pay your apartment rent or the mortgage on your home.

At least two council members mentioned that if marijuana is what we say it is then we should allow it to be sold in drug stores. This merely comes out of a strong desire to control; to get a handle on the trade and give it to big business. I don’t want to buy marijuana from CVS, I want to buy it from the guy I can chat with about life at my favorite dispensary. Don’t crush the dispensaries; don’t put all those owners, all those employees out of work when we should be praising their business prowess. The dispensaries owners are the entrepreneurs that saw the demand and did the necessary work to capitalize on it; let’s not punish them for that.

Allow yourself time to shift your views.

Prop 19: When Stoners Stop Being Seen as Deviants

The last California Gubernatorial election showed me a few things; one, no matter how much people hate the Democratic AND Republican nominee, almost all the votes still go to only those two parties. And two, pot is still a bane of society.

I remember, a few weeks before the vote, some stoner friends were saying they weren't going to vote; fearing legalization would only hurt their medicinal status and that marijuana would be outrageously taxed. This confusion is one thing that led to the failure to pass Proposition 19.

It's not just confused stoners (and some anti-pot sandbagging) though; reading though articles online, you see comments like "I don't recognize the right to get high," and similar sentiments. The fact of the matter is, whether or not you recognize the right to get high (or drunk for that matter), it's still a right (or should be, in the case of the former).

Somehow, we need to change people's perception; stoners are still seen as degenerates and hippy deviants. You could show them the cancer patients who smoke cannabis or the elderly with arthritis but it's not just them who matter in this; it's them and the twenty-three year old smoking for his old sports injuries and the forty-eight year old guy working in retail, getting chewed out everyday by the scum of the consumer world.

We need to remember that each one of us is human, and each of us humans have different needs; you have different needs than your daughter; your wife and son, each, have different needs too. Maybe you like the drink but your wife has always been a smoker; you compromise or you split but neither indirectly pass legislation, in the home, making it so the other can not do what it is they'd like to do. You talk to one another, like humans; like people.

We need real change in this country and we need it now! Sure for pot but also for people, for equality. We need to see each other as brothers, sisters, as one people. We have different lifestyles but why can't we live and let live? Is it possible that we are so cold to each other that, if asked, we could tell every person, eye to eye, person to person, that we say they can not do what they'd like to do; be it marry another man or, more relevant to the post, have a little weed?