Dear Friend and Reader:
I had my first near brush with breaking the law when my mother forced me to flush my bag of shake-weed she found rifling through my luggage while I was home from schoolВ for Christmas break. Regardless of whether police were present or not, marijuana laws and taboosВ against it were present enough inВ my day that myВ mother, a new immigrant, not at all enamoured of American culture, let alone its counter-cultureВ decided to keep her daughter from facing time in the slammer in Santa Cruz County, forcing me to discard my weed in the circling toilet drain.
Such were the days of growing up in the 60s and 70s in Puritan-founded America with Catholic parents. So powerful was the message against the use of marijuana that it was made an emblem of criminal social decline. Its very presence made you suspect. Fast-forward thirty years later, guided by behavior that kept all manner of subversive smoking under wraps, it was a revelationВ for me to read my favorite local political columnist in the SF Chronicle, Carla Marinucci writing about the growing movement to legalize marijuana, and from surprising quarters of support.
Leading conservatives like former Secretary of State George Shultz and the late economist Milton Friedman years ago called for legalization and a change in the strategy in the war on drugs. This year mainstream pundits like Fox News’ Glenn Beck and CNN’s Jack Cafferty have publicly questioned the billions spent each year fighting the endless war against drugs and to suggest it now makes more financial and social sense to tax and regulate marijuana.
“It’s a combination of all these things coming together at once and producing that ‘aha’ moment,” said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, who for years has monitored the wavering political winds on the subject. He says so much has changed in recent months that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, it looks possible.”
“If you’d asked me 10 years ago – or three years ago – I would have said it will be a long, slow slog,” he said. “And now, it looks like it might happen faster than any of us believed.”
It was bound to come. We were just indoors for too long to realize the day was breaking. The economy and just plain common sense are starting to weigh in on our decisions. Marijuana is a lucrative cash crop that could bring in revenue to states suffering underВ the largerВ recession affecting the entire country.В The cost of incarceration for petty crimes like pot possession weigh down law enforcement from the streets to the prisons, and the taxpayers are footing the bill for each inmateВ at a whopping (for my state) $65k per capita per year.
Decriminalizing pot, taxing it like alcohol and making it a cash crop just makes sense. When George Schulz, Ronald Reagan’s former Secretary of State comes to the conclusion that instead of criminalizing, legalizing and regulating marijuana was a more prudent use of national security dollars, something has shifted.В В What happened the last thirty years to allow us to witness this cultural turnabout? You may even ask, what has happened the last six months?
In Richard Tarnas’ Cosmos and Psyche andВ its chapterВ “Epochs of Revolution,” the Sixties was an era of immense social change and revolution spurred by Uranus and Pluto in alignment. Those of us born during or lived through it can attest. As Eric mentions in his piece, “Born in the Sixties,” there wasВ planetary activityВ going on in the skyВ withВ Uranus and PlutoВ that openedВ our self-awareness to an extent that itВ was not just a personal event.
Uranus-Pluto alignmentsВ are game-changers on a global scale.В With an alignment of these two planets with Chiron, Neptune and Saturn, there was a brief period in American life that experienced a freedom and audacity large enoughВ to engrave an entireВ cultural and generationalВ mindset.В It madeВ life and policy changes and forced a conservative response, which we see today.
The Sixties have been referred to as more than a mere reference or a trend. It was aВ period embedded in our history that brought the civil rights movement to full fruit, birthed the anti-war movement, nurtured the women’s movement, opened the sexual revolution with a blast, and laid down the foundations of the environmental movement.
Its no wonder what happened in the SixtiesВ made alot of people vested in controlling the world and its resources quite anxious. A lot was at stake to keep up a racial and gender inequality and divide, and to continue aВ Cold War and its proxiesВ because ofВ war’sВ profitability in chemical and biological weapons, nuclear energy, and of course, oil.
How appropriate then that its when Uranus-Pluto,В also known asВ Prometheus-Bacchus, areВ in alignment,В in this case a square, that the rules are changing and fun andВ maybe evenВ healingВ is possible. Prometheus, the Awakener and Bacchus, the Bringer of Pleasure, are hefty boys to invite to a party. For an America mired in a recession caused by years of corporatism, risky investments, and expensive military adventures gone astray,В healthy awareness and fun may be exactly what the doctor ordered.
Marinucci’s article also suggests something we know about Uranus-Pluto alignments: their affects can be feltВ a fewВ years prior to their actually being exact, and we have seven Uranus-Pluto squares approaching, two in 2012, two in 2013 and 2015, and a final one in 2015.В В It seems today in 2009 we’re watching the thunderclouds form on the horizon. The revolution isВ turning around andВ coming home.
As ground-breaking as the Sixties were, there was a bit of a safety rail, perhaps too much, with Saturn preventing us from breaking completely free.В The next Uranus-PlutoВ squares starting in 2012 will have nothing to impede it. This is an opportunity to work collectively and creatively with the tools we’ve got to fight for what we want, getting rid of the stuff –В attitudes and inhibitions preventing us from being as free, creative, open, loving and compassionateВ a people and aВ planet as possible. Not just the spliff, but the entire party.В All the other stuff, save the baby with the bathwater, let’s flushВ away. Its 2009 and the sky is going to support us. Let’s get it started.
Yours & truly,
Fe Bongolan
San Francisco
the drugs for schizo probably brought on the multiple sclerosis – or that is what we were told. Shit rolls downhill.
So, you won’t smoke a bowl with me?!? ;P It’s all cool, no smoke with you, no guns for me, I can dig it.
I speak not so much about ‘drugs’ being placed into things, so much as everything ‘being’ a drug. It’s difficult for me to go into with words, unless I sit here for days in dynamic, contemplative conversation. But, to throw it out in an extreme polar expression, if someone says something to you that alters your perception, then those ‘words’ are ‘drugs’! (It takes some fancy conversation, and a lot of dancing, to get that one through).
I’ve known quite a few users of anything you can think of. Not only does ‘drug’ use need to be differentiated along individual substance lines but, also between individuals partaking in specific substances. I’ve known some folks to maintain, and some to ruin. (Some folk can grow big and strong from drinking cow’s milk, some folk buckle over in gut wrenching pain from the slightest dab of cream). It’s truly the quality and awareness of the beings we interact with, (or I should say, the quality and awareness a being acts from).
I’ll defend mother nature, and my good friend Maryjane. The old propagandist bias, that loco weed, killer of integrity and all things virtuous and moral has seen it’s better days. (And yeah it’s true, some people, no matter whether they use or not, are just plain pieces of shit! There’s no stopping bad genetics and culture!).
I’ll end here, unless I find something useful to convey.
Peace and Smiles,
Jere
Patty-
In regard to Timothy Leary, I am able to separate the man from his work and his work undeniably has merit despite his human flaws. Leary said to “think for yourself” and not rely on him or any other (healer, guru, master) for knowledge or truth. Truth comes from personal experience and perspective. Experience influences our perspective. I have an ex-girlfriend who experiences anxiety triggered from the mere smell of weed, because her mother would wake her up in the middle of the night when she was a child to take her off of their property where her father was growing, to her grandmother’s property when the CAMP helicopters would make their nightly raids. I know my fair share of souls who abuse marijuana to their detriment and those around them. I know many who do the same with food instead of drugs. I think this is another failure of prohibitive abstinence. Youths are not taught how to use substances consciously with intention. Ritual is lost to meaningless habit. This has a parallel to sex abstinence. I have never seen evidence of marijauna or PCP (not that I’m condoning experimentation for tranquilizers meant for large animals) leading to multiple sclerosis. If PCP does cause MS, this is another argument for regulation preventing adulteration that may be prevalent in the black market.
Fe-
You obviously found your amount of use to cause undesirable side effects so you have adjusted the frequency of your use accordingly. Too much of anything…
jlo-
Thanks.
Keep your kindness.
jinspace-
I like the Spanish model. It’s just enough and it defuses the profit motive.
“If you tell your children marijauna is the same as hard[er] drugs, your children will think hard drugs are the same as marijuana.” – Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php
no teacher, no guru, no method – van morrison http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l0NDfoMago
Hi Jere! haha.
I have a houseful of guns, but they are cowboy guns. That’s my excuse – ha!
Yes – drugs in everything – the water, the air, the food – where do we go from here? I don’t know and don’t have the answers. But I grow my own food, and my water is as good as it gets with no farm run-off and I count myself lucky in that regard.
My eccentric neighbors have grown their own weed for years (over 30) and mind their own business – so guess you are right about it being more than just marijuana.
But anyone that brings it to my house gets an ass-kicking. Ok?
Love,
My disability qualifies me to be a medical cannabis patient in California.
I take regular prescription medication, get acupuncture, meditate, exercise, and eat mostly organic produce. I am lucky to live near several medical cannabis dispensaries, and have found that a good Sativa dominant strain of cannabis helps me to be creative and positive. Recent research shows that marijuana contains several active chemical compounds, and that there are cannabinoid receptors in the human brain. I have been educating my doctors and believe that home grown is the best, however, not everyone has the space to grow, or a green thumb, so we have dispensaries. It’s an imperfect system but it’s what we have evolved so far.
I imagine some sort of hybrid tax/regulation will have to be worked out, but people definitely should be allowed to grow their own everything. Weed, tomatoes, mushrooms, whatever. Buying cuttings from reputable sources is best for beginners because seeds may not germinate, and those that do have to be culled for male plants.
By the way, 4/20 is next Monday. I’ll see you all on Hippie Hill (SF) @ 4:20 pm
No way! I agree with, and have seen, and been most intimate with the tweakers dealing guns, the slammers with guns robbing 2 bucks from some unassuming cat, the crackhead hookers kickin’ it “on your city block”, “on mine”, and I’ve kicked it with them. I won’t ‘tolerate’ in my own life some jackass coming along and trying to work me, and I will try to inform my friends, with stories, perceptions, the best I can, so that they don’t get worked over. However, I will deduce this topic with anyone who gives a fuck, Marijuana is not a substance(matter) to be condemned! The fucked up cats have ‘other’ reasons. Not weed! If one wishes to pursue this topic, come armed with every account of your life and consumption(I’m talking every matter/second intake), ’cause if only philosophically/morally we’ve qualms…. perhaps we’d better check ourselves, bias, and ignorance could be trying to liberate themselves!?!
And check it out man, ‘diet’. That word, in and of itself, speaks volumes regarding this subject, as well as a host of others in quantum space, not so dissimilar, in metaphoric, and literal sense to our own… EVERYTHING you ingest, food, T.V., Web…. Fuck, your daily interactions, it’s all “drugs”. “Diet”. It’s the awareness factor that trumps the deck.
I can’t change your perception with words, not now at least. You’ve a lifetime of program to reveal. (This is for everyone, by the way). I will say that, as a pot smoker, I love you, and I’m doin’ what I can, in my own way, to make this a better reality for all (even if I fuck up hardcore sometimes).
See? No guns! 🙂
Jere
Hi Jere,
True – smokers are fun or mellow to a point, the meth/cocaine gang seem to be possessed with evil spirits. I wrote my note and, presto! – turned on the cable and started watching ‘up in smoke’ – as good a laugh as any in the bad ole days of the, 80s was it? I grew up in the 60s, when everyone was snorting and smoking everything and anything. All joking aside, I know too many people who went to jail, prison, or nursing home for drug related reasons. Most prisoners go to jail not for taking drugs, but for the crimes they committed to support the habit. A nephew on my husband’s side beat a girlfriend nearly to death by beating her head into a bathtub. Don’t know when the temper started, but it is now 35 years later and he still has one that is ugly enough to raise the hackles on your neck. I think it was the PCP people smoked with the marijuana. Doctors blamed it on my brother’s schizophrenia, which lead to multiple sclerosis.
My most recent experience with marijuana was Easter Sunday. A nephew who claimed to not have money to pay 3 months light bill managed to get my mother to pay it for him. After dinner, he and the girlfriend went outside to smoke a joint. We didn’t tell my mother. They have a baby, and you would think the rest of us owe it to them to keep them in diapers and electricity since the smoking habit must be supported at all costs. I mean AT ALL COSTS. These people do not care what happens to their baby, they only care about themselves.
Jere, everyone I know who smokes marijuana has the same attitude – that the world owes them something. Why is that? It isn’t enough to rob your own family to keep up the habit – and I mean rob them of well being, milk, diapers, heating, nice furniture and medical care – but they will also rob their neighbors, their churches by withholding an offering, and the governments by not paying taxes and supporting local schools and public service agencies, this website by claiming to be too poor, and so on. We’ve had native american friends who even had the ‘holier than thou’ attitude as an excuse for their horrid behavior. Really, these people are not honest with themselves at all.
I’ve seen it all, unfortunately. I’d like to kick all their asses, but I’m too crippled.
Love you Jere, but I hate what drugs do to people.
Patty, no offense intended(you know that), the type of reality you define seems more on the tweaker (methamphetamine) level, NOT the “stoner” mentality. I’ll blow this ‘wide open’ right now and say that, “everything you subject your body to, is a drug. Ingested, breathed, respired, and transpired, … We transform ourselves endlessly and continually. Physically, mentally, any-ly you put it, Here we are.” With that in mind, we now continue on to another ‘space’ in reality, ‘what are we actually aware of, and what actually works?’ Let’s not be too quick to answer for another, (reality has that ‘I’ll revert and sting-your-ass mentality’ we all soooo enjoy). “Individual substances effect individual people in individual ways”. Smoke is very much misunderstood, and we should all probably go through the rites on that one. “Drugs”!!! is such a restrictive, confining, dulling, misplaced, misunderstood, and worst of all ‘abused’ term, we should think more Highly of ourselves!
Just engaging, (la dee da)….
Smiles at ya…. 🙂
Your smilingly beautiful friend,
Jere
Chad, no offense but every drug user i know also abuses other people. They lie, cheat and steal; they beat up on loved ones, and they will rob even the elders for a hit. They break the law and destroy their families and their own bodies. Nothing anyone says will change my opinion about this. I’m too old and have too many skeletons in the closet and in the nursing home too. Too many old friends are dead and dying. Too many relatives have served time in jail and still make excuses for robbing my 83 year old Mother, who did what she could to help them. If you choose to listen to Timothy Leary, you need more help than I have to offer. I’ve never met a drug user that had much to offer other than more abuse of one sort or another. They lie to themselves more than anyone else. If you refuse to help these people, they turn around and rob you anyway. They may be pitiable, but my empathy goes to the people they harm, not to them.
Chad, excellently worded. Fe, exactly correct on the context of the ancients.
Here in California, people are still being cited, and fined, several hundred dollars per smoking a bowl in public. I know, I worked my way through the Santa Cruz court system this past summer (3 times I went, finally the citing officer was unavailable and the case was dismissed. I escaped paying “penalties and assessments” cause I’m a bum with no official income.)
If cannabis is legalized and taxed, I believe it will have nominal repercussions on the home-growers. One can still grow top quality kind, in their personal spaces, and sell at a non-taxable (yet illegal, some things never change) price, which will allow them to undercut the Gov’s. taxed product. This could also potentially get us better prices on smoke (’cause even $10 a gram is pushing it!)
One other thing, a side note, for rumination, on Jan. 1st, 1994, Arizona passed a law that made psilocybin mushrooms a “class 4 felony”, punishable with up to 10 years in PRISON?!!! No joke!? A fucking naturally occurring fungi!?! 10 years!!! Prison!!!
This could be a very cool thing, it’s just, as people, the public, we’ve got to take this (as well as every other aspect of experiential existence) into our own hands, and decide from there where we want to take this. Smoke is not an enemy, it is a friend. Self responsibility, and awareness are the keys. Blanket generalities are only in the mind.
Be well.
Have a kind day!! (I will!!!;))
Love,
Jere
Eric – Hmm ..interesting comment. Everything is perspective, as you yourself have said.
In my understanding I have come to see that we can only control our ability to control. This means that control is happening all the time anyway, consciously and subconsciously. Call it control call it contraction, restriction, repression, denial, limitation etc.
So, what to repress/restrict/limit? For me, I trust that God’s Will/the Divine Mother Universe works. Let Nature decide what’s best, because there’s no way I trust my 5000 year old subconscious mind of the matrix: ‘the enemy is all around’.
My yoga and meditation practice is a practical subconscious clearing. All the stuff that has been collected by the subconscious the day before needs to go so my true identity, my ability to deeply connect with others as ‘me’ can happen.
When I do yoga and meditate I am consciously bringing myself to a zero point – shuniya. this is the reset button, the portal which is infinity itself. Our personal connection to the Galactic Core. All arises and returns to this point.
When you command all your energies to rest in shuniya then all that is not ‘you’ is discarded and your natural state, the Oneness, can then enjoy your human experience of connecting to others in a real way the rest of your day.
Chad:
I find it interesting that the views and opinions on this topic are as varied as the communities that have evolved from the sixties and further and are commenting on this thread. Some of us were in the fight, some have parents who were part of it, others are on the other side of it.
I think we are an addicted society, perhaps world. Drugs, power, money, religion, exercise…etc. There is a spiritual lack that no one thing, practice, or consumable can fill completely. That’s as varied as the universe. We all have our various needs, and one persons grass is another one’s poison. Is that the way of the world since the ancients? I think so.
FYI, my excuse for not partaking now as much as I did when I was a student had nothing to do with the law. It was because I needed to prevent the dry-eye that would pop my contact lenses out. So much the radical I am.
Fe-
Thanks for covering such a controversial and necessary topic.
10 of Cups Marijuana Mars in Pisces – Herbal Tarot
angiel-
CIA fantasylands and paranoia exist because of the current drug laws and potential punishment upon conviction, not as a direct result of cannabis use. Most proponents for drug law reform agree age limits should be put in place as they are with alcohol and tobacco. I know many yogis who get cranky and irrational (a failed attempt at spiritual detachment) if they miss a yoga class or their personal morning meditation session. Their behavior is similar to someone experiencing nicotine withdrawal or missing their initial cup of coffee upon rising. Dopey dopeheads is terminology used to promote discrimination and further isolate people who already may be suffering from mental illnesses and social phobias. The “loss of emotional maturity” myth is just another obstacle to used to prolong the recovery process based on guilt. I don’t know what to say about injecting the plants with speed except that it would be time and cost-prohibitive to a drug capitalist. If such heinous practices are true, they would be greatly reduced, if not eliminated by legalization and regulation. As Fe mentioned, more research and development may lead to technological advances in drug adminsitration, such as vaporization and sprays to reduce respiratory complications from burnt carbon emissions.
Patty-
I applaud seeking peace from within, however using yoga and meditation to ignore the reality of drugs and those use them creates further isolation for the drug users and an indulgent, if not self-righteous escapism the for the yogi or martial artist.
Cannabis has never blocked my cranio-sacral wave. Everyone I know who does and does not use marijuana is dependent on everyone else for practically everything. Yoga means union, not personal betterment to set oneself above or create isolation from “lesser beings”.
Timothy Leary coined the phrase “set and setting” referring to the mind-set, or mood and personality of the person using psycho-active drugs, and the setting or environment where the drugs were being taken. Legalizing drugs may remove the social and career killing stigma of drug users creating individuals with socially-integrated, productive mindsets and create a setting without the constraints of fear and paranoia that are so prevalent in society today.
dhmark – are you aware that Wilhelm Reich issued the same kinds of warnings about yoga? If I recall from The Function of the Orgasm, he describes it as a control and repression device.
For some reason this discussion makes me think of the tv program, Northern Exposure. In all its beauty, it depicted a town of people all trying to approach, engage, and take on personal responsibility and their own versions of enlightenment, all while living and loving their lives day in and day out. If someone wants to do X (figuratively, literally) and they know they really want to do so, and if they are smart enough to buy or grow or steal (really?), their own experimentation will bring them to a point of shi(f)t. Every kind of behavior, every kind of humanity, every kind of personality quirk, nearly every kind of social taboo was depicted. And, there was fun to be had!
Regulations, who knows best, etc are all forms of control. Now, I’m not saying knowledge and teaching and learning are not of utmost importance, but what I am saying is that we do need to shift interests back to everyone learning about stuff for themselves rather than relying on the SYSTEM to supply all the correct answers.
Toodles.
Dharmk is right. When I was treated by a spiritual healer, one of the things I learned is that the spinal fluid needs to flow freely to help release ‘the tide’. The tide is a flow of energetic motion that travels your body and brings healing. Maybe it is your spiritual man, I don’t know.
To help precipitate this, lie on your bed and meditate peacefully. Take your hand and press your tailbone very firmly upward, as if you are holding your butt. It works better if someone else can do it for you, but you can do it by turning slightly on your side. You should feel a surge of energy that is both healing and peaceful, and that is slightly out of body. If you are very sensitive, you should actually feel the wave of energy as it flows around your body – and the flow is like an ocean wave. It is called ‘the tide’ for that reason.
All drugs are the enemy. Everyone I know who smokes marijuana is dependent on everyone else for practically everything. Tapping into the power of your own inner man will bring the peace you seek.
There is a great guy on a site called jostsauer.com who teaches you how to move thro drugs and into a superior drug free high and he is my kind of drug user Which is an EX user. He has done the lot in his drug years and now does TCM and martial arts.
In my country people spray hydro with the stuff you use for cockroaches and anything to hand There is also no regulation about how often you change the hydro chemicals And speed can be injected into the plant It is much stronger than in the goooood oooold days
I have 2 young male relatives in my extended with marijuana damage One has been in rehab for 3 years and is at last coming good at 29 [NO more ax under the bed and CIA fantasy land ] What he will do for a life now remains to be seen as he spent his teens and twenties out of it The other one has sad personality changes that seem to be permanent not to mention that for every year you take a drug you delay yout emotional maturity one year He is 20 years behind. And it shows.
Coming up to my age I know one lung cancer and 2 emphysemas among exdope people I know. They have to use oxygen all the time And the years of doping show in the older people I know They get cranky and irrational.
As a drug phone line person I listen to family members who are trying to motivate dopey dopeheads to get out of bed and work and live and not live off them. It is uphill work.
The marijuana laws in Spain are interesting and, in my opinion, just right. Smoking weed is legal. Selling weed is illegal but selling seeds is not. Any adult can legally cultivate two plants per year. Head shops sell seeds in packs of two (with a regular, non-inflated sales tax applied). The quality is excellent (supplied by organic seed companies) and the yields are sufficient enough to last a year – right through the following growing season. They’ve got it worked out, and nobody gives a rat’s ass – as it should be.
victorialynn:
Money is the drug that’s been over-valued.
Fluidity – I’m all for self-sufficiency! I think you nailed it…
I do find it kind of sick though, it coming down to money. How many cocktail-swilling adults berated me and my friends for smoking, slurring their steady stream of admonitions, cautioning that we would become a comatose generation? They were so deeply buried themselves that they couldn’t see beyond their own little plots. Well, now it’s time for them to wake up, and the cha-ching of money in the till is their alarm clock.
I no longer smoke, but remember laughing hysterically at “Reefer Madness.” I still chuckle at the memory, but am finding it sad that money soothes a plethora of fears.
From another perspective on this discussion.. I am a practicing yogi and lover of the sensitivity and beauty of life. The purpose of drugs – any kind – are only to get you out of reality. The drug taker does not want to, or cannot, face their physical or emotional or spiritual pain.
For a person that’s dying of cancer this could be a compassionate gift.
For a person wishing greater intimacy in their life this will block that possibility.
Marijuana, in particular, stimulates the brain cells while constricting the spinal fluid creating a drought condition in the brain. This then creates a tremendous stress on the nervous system and immune system which must be accounted for. If consumed over time, it will require sincere practice of meditations and cleansing to re-align the chakras and meridians to properly represent your psycho-spiritual profile (ie ‘you’) this lifetime.
Psychologically, believing you need the drug for a certain state (which you can get from a other healthy practices) creates a subtle deficiency-feeling in your character. This expands over time to deepen insecurities and increase paranoia further separating you from the capacity to have depth in relationships.
it’s a plant, with seeds. people grow it, and if it’s legal, there’ll be that much less in the way of encouraging people to become micro-farmers
a good way to get people to become a bit more self-sufficient, it may prove to be a great gateway plant to get people to start growing their own everything (once you learn the skills, why not?)
even if they’re mass producing it, there’ll still be that craving for homegrown.
less convenient, but much more satisfying
Makes sense to me Fe; here in Kentucky we grow great tobacco (and pot) so that would make the governor and probably quite a few farmers happy – again. But who would we sell all those guns to? (kidding)
eric:
I think it needs to be regulated, if nothing else for the prison structure and sentencing alone.
Remember there are beers and whiskies that apparently are made at small breweries and distilleries.
I think part of the equation needs to be supporting local economies, since importing weed over long stretches of highways is going jerk up the price and jerk off the quality. Supply and demand, and let the market sort it out, if we must go into capitalism-speak.
A local grower has quality control built in to their product. You can check out the manufacturing plant right there.
There’s also the medicinal aspects of the plant, and certain guideliness need to be established for it to make medicinal quality.
In other words, there’s alot of work to do ‘tween an ideal that you suggest and the actual framework with which we conduct business R & D now. Much to work out.
I don’t like the idea of legalizing weed. I don’t want to see it feed the war machine (through ever higher sin taxes). Personally I would rather not have to purchase mine from R J Reynolds. Weed is not a cigarette; it’s something that shifts consciousness, and I don’t want that mentality involved. God knows if they won’t make GMO weed that makes you think or act a certain way. Also this will be bad for individual growers; I imagine they would try to ban that (even though it does fine when it’s totally illegal).
All the more reason to make it a crop like grapes, and to lay down some environemtnal laws protecting its quality, since people are using it for legitimate medicinal purposes.
Bring on the peace pipe! I have to say that with all of the recent breakouts of sominela(sp) found in peanuts, in tomatoes, and other things, I’ve began wondering what type of pesticides could actually be used on a marijuana crop, an uncontrolled substance, and the effects on our bodies.