Stephan: I was at dinner the other night and spoke with a prominent physician who I think is considerably more conservative then me, and who feels marijuana is dangerous, although he was willing to concede that there was some indication that medical marijuana might do some good in certain limited cases. I asked him what he thought the impact of legalization in Washington had been? Had he seen anything that stood out for him negatively on the island? After a moment's thought he said, he hadn't seen any impact and thus didn't know how to answer. Nothing seemed to have changed. That has also been my experience.
We have two recreational outlets, and two medical outlets. None seems to draw a crowd, I read nothing in the paper about them anymore, and haven't heard anyone talking about them recently. Like same-sex marriage the story is there is no story, in the sense of disaster or crisis.
Readers in Colorado have written to tell me the same thing, and this report seems to confirm it in detail. All the prohibitionist hysteria has turned out to be just that: hysteria. I suspect it will be the same in Oregon and Alaska. And by the next election that the entire Western United States will have legalized, and it will be clear that as with alcohol and dry states, prohibition is a bias, not a fact-based position.
Credit: Denver Post
Nearly 5 million marijuana-infused edibles and almost 150,000 pounds of cannabis flower were purchased in legal Colorado stores and dispensaries in 2014, yet only 67 of Colorado’s 321 total jurisdictions allow the sale of medical and recreational pot, according to an encompassing and unprecedented new report from the state.
The Marijuana Enforcement Division’s first annual report, issued Friday, is one of the most important documents to date in Colorado’s marijuana experiment because it’s the first to give complete, state-sanctioned statistics on what marijuana looked like in its first full year of recreational sales.
“The Marijuana Enforcement Division feels that it is imperative to remain transparent on such a highly publicized issue in Colorado,” Lewis Koski, director of the Marijuana Enforcement Division, said in a statement. “It is the goal of MED to ensure that information of this nature is made available so that the public can fully understand the scope and nature of this newly regulated industry.”
There’s a lot to learn about “the scope and nature” of marijuana in Colorado. Some of […]
When I learned that my son, at age 13, smoked pot his Dad and I told him that as long as he kept up his grades we had no problem with him imbibing. I also let him know that alcohol was clearly forbidden. While he got drunk/sick with his friends sometimes, he kept his grades up, getting nearly straight A’s all four years. He has two close friends who did the same. This won’t work for every child/parent relationship, but it did for ours. He’s more clear on what he wants to do in life now at age 20 and also doesn’t enjoy alcohol, except on rare occasions. I have found that those who continue to demonize cannabis haven’t allowed themselves to be open to the truth about this wonderfully amazing plant.
Here’s a great documentary shedding light on the dark lies we’ve been sold about cannabis:
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-union-the-business-behind-getting-high/