let the games begin!
i wondered how long before the "new drug wars" would start the scrambling around for whose the big dog.
Pot legalization activists are running into an unexpected and ironic opponent in their efforts to make cannabis legal: Big Marijuana.
Medical marijuana is a billion-dollar industry — legal in 18 states, including California, Nevada, Oregon and Maine — and like any entrenched business, it’s fighting to keep what it has and shut competitors out. Dispensary owners, trade associations and groups representing the industry are deeply concerned — and in some cases actively fighting — ballot initiatives and legislation that could wreck their business model.
That pits them against full legalization advocates, who have been hoping to play off wins at the ballot box last fall in Colorado and Washington state that installed among the most permissive pot laws in the world. Activists are hoping to pass full legalization measures in six more states by 2016.
From the point of view of dispensary owners, legalization laws — depending on how they’re written — can have little immediate upside and offer plenty of reasons for concern. For one, their businesses — still illegal under federal law — benefit from exclusive monopolies on the right to sell legal pot, but state measures still don’t end the risks of an FBI raid or Internal Revenue Service audit. Meanwhile, those same federal laws that prohibit growing, selling and using keeps pot prices high.
are we in for another prohibition type feds against the the growers and illegal distributors, and a host of new regulatory laws that just create more jobs to combat what they have never been able to before.
i would think it would be harder with the introduction of legality too many ways to exploit it and hide the illegalities, then again it could be more infiltration of the law enforcers that would allow better intel and more face to face with the big people, but we also need to consider the human factor, greed. piles of money are real enticements when you are risking your life for a fraction of what's in front of you. just don't see the change in the so call failed war against drugs being much better as the old,new war on drugs.
