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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Eat Your Heart Out, Corn!

posted by on December 19 at 12:24 PM

field_of_dreams.jpg

From the department of things we more or less already knew: Pot is America’s top cash crop. Thank you, analysts — we can now say it with confidence.

These official findings mean a few things:

We can flip the bird to B.C. and their vaunted bud. We have enough of our own - $38.5 billion worth — and, besides, their pot sucks compared to the stuff grown here.

If we regulate pot and tax it like hooch or cigarettes, we’d have acres of revenue for all sorts of programs that currently run dry. Drug treatment on demand: No problem. Education programs so kids don’t get hooked on smack: Bam. Monorail (marijuanarail?): On track. Damn, it would be nice.

In exchange, by converting the marijuana market into one ruled by corporations (which is less sexy but better than stoners getting plugged in the slammer), the cottage industry of folks growing pot and hooking up their friends would run dry. Dealers wouldn’t be liquidating billions of their illicit cash, thereby shifting overall consumer spending (no, not by stoners on Twinkies because you’d still have roughly the same amount of pot smoked and munchies craved). What would be affected? Snowboarding industry: Shredded. X-Box sales: Unplugged. Ziploc Corporation: Sacked. I’m sure there’s other stuff, but you get the picture. There would be real - however trivial - consequences.

Of course, establishing a regulated national market would literally require an act of Congress. So don’t hold your breath.

RSS icon Comments

1

I've been thinking lately about a method that hasn't been used in the legalization effort: A set of coordinated statewide initiatives directing the Congressional delegation from that state and the other signatory states to sponsor legislation to reclassify marijuana and make other reforms to the war on drugs.

I think what kills most legalization initiatives is that most people got more out of civics class than they are commonly given credit for. Most people understand the federal heirarchy and the separation of powers. This directs the people who need to do the work to do the work.

Posted by Ken | December 19, 2006 12:39 PM
2

As great as that sounds, until the Federal congress, senate, and president to reclassify pot to the equivalent of beer or cigarettes, what laws the states make is useless. Maybe it would pass in Washington, but no state has been able to pass a law saying recreational use of weed is OK.

Posted by elswinger | December 19, 2006 12:49 PM
3

This may be oversimplification, but I think a big problem is voter turn out. Most of the people that actually go out and vote are the "drugs are bad" crowd. That's why politicians are too chicken S to do anything about it.

Almost every stoner I know gives me a blank stare when I ask them how they voted.

Posted by Mike in MO | December 19, 2006 1:14 PM
4

If there's gonna be a "marijuanarail" I am so totally getting the Elvis Seat!

Posted by Michael | December 19, 2006 1:17 PM
5

marijuanarail - I LOVE it!

Marijuanarails don't get stuck in traffic and are quieter than light rail.

The Osaka Marijuanarail continued operating as a vital transportation link after a devastating earthquake.

Marijuanarails can be the future of transportation for the City of Seattle!

Posted by Noink | December 19, 2006 1:32 PM
6

Elswinger - what I'm suggesting is instructing the legislators to do the people's bidding. Nobody's going to run for office on a marjiuana legalization platform but it's a hell of a political catch-22 if you've got a clear, certified instruction from your constituencies to do something which would be political suicide if you were to suggest it. In this way it really makes it the people's decision. I'm not talking about anything more being done at the state level than the certification of the people's will. The rest of the work would have to be done in Congress. It would have to come up repeatedly.

Posted by Ken | December 19, 2006 1:43 PM
7

Uh.....the stuff we get from BC in ottawa and montreal has been damn good.

Posted by rj | December 19, 2006 2:36 PM
8

This may come as a shock to those who know my reputation as a drug-addled faggot supreme, but I prefer corn to the kind. I grew up in a little town in Illinois, surrounded by corn and soybean fields. The corn grew so quickly during late summer, you could literally hear it growing. The smell of the ripe corn was amazing, and after the harvest, in autumn, the dry stalks made the fields look inhabited somehow. Today, I'll take a corn muffin over a blunt anytime.

Posted by Mark Mitchell | December 19, 2006 2:40 PM
9

If you smoke the blunt first, you can eat as many corn muffins as you can find.

Posted by pox | December 19, 2006 2:49 PM
10

Ken. I think we actually agree, but I have talked to a couple retired U.S. congressmen, one of whom told me that even Newt Gingrich thought pot should be legal, but it would be political society to bring a bill to the floor, because their opponent(s) would say they were soft on drugs.

Until a significant majority of Americans support legalizing pot, the U.S. legislature will not even consider it.

I wish they would. I haven't been able to find weed for almost seven months and could certainly use some.

Posted by elswinger | December 19, 2006 3:08 PM
11

Two words, Elswinger: The Ave.

Another part of the equation is that the so-called "war on drugs" funnels hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars into the coffers of local law enforcement agencies, both directly through government funding for anti-drug programs (which, like DARE have proven largely ineffectual), special investigative and prosecutorial departments, lots of cool, expensive toys, etc., as well as indirectly via the property takings provisions written into most current drug laws.

And let's not forget the lucrative Incarceration Industry that's sprung up in this country in the last 30 years, due primarily to government needing to privatize penal institutions in order to accomodate the swelling prison population created by increased prosecution of drug users, suppliers and growers.

All this provides a strong economic disincentive toward decriminalization and legalization, because now there are a lot of local, county and state agencies, along with private for-profit enterprises that depend upon a system built around keeping drugs illegal. If pot were legalized, it would be the equivalent knocking the foundation out from underneath a house-of-cards; the whole economic system that supports these industries would collapse under the weight of its own bloatedness.

Posted by COMTE | December 19, 2006 3:40 PM
12

Haven't been able to find weed in Seattle? That's like not being able to find a mosquito in a wetland. Like not being able to find a Bob Seger song on classic rock radio. A lost sock in a laundromat. Porn at the library. A pedophile at a church service. A thief in an elected office. You just haven't been looking, Elswinger.

Posted by Gurldoggie | December 19, 2006 3:46 PM
13

For a long time I always knew a guy who knew a guy, and for a short time I actually knew "The Guy" so I never had to go look for weed. I've been on the Ave and have never been offered weed for sale and I'm too chicken shit to walk up to one of the skate punks to ask.

On the Haight in San Francisco you can't walk half a block without someone offering "kind bud" and the cops don't give a shit.

Posted by elswinger | December 19, 2006 4:57 PM
14

As an ex BC-er, I have to disagree about quality of BC bud. You must have a bad supplier.

Not that I've bought any since moving here, but used to be WA weed was pretty pitiful, except the local stuff the Bellinghampsters had.

Posted by Will in Seattle | December 19, 2006 5:25 PM
15

You're absolutely right, RJ and Will, the BC Bud in Canada is potent and flavorful.

But the BC bud exported to the US has been engineered and processed to make it more transportable and profitable. It is usually mass-produced, low in scent, low in resin, over dried, and condensed into hard, flavorless chunks. Even more disappointing for stoners, most of it has been keifed (had the THC crystals shaken off), so lots of the active chemical stays behind in Canada. Naturally, they don't do this to the pot they keep and neither do US growers, who usually have fewer plants to avoid stiff penalties and produce small harvests of the highest quality product possible.

So that's why the BC bud you smoked in Canada got you baked off your ass, but the mass-produced BC Bud we get in the US is about as appealing as Labatts - especially when compared to microbrew-esque pot grown locally.

Posted by Dominic Holden | December 19, 2006 6:16 PM
16

A small joint is proferred to each of the guests along with a snifter of cognac on the terrace.

"This is from our southern-facing slopes," the host says. "Best seed, best soil, fourteen hours of sunshine. Dried and aged in what used to be our fermentation building, giving it a hint of oak."

The guests light up, hold in a long toke.

"Terroir, buddy," one old-timer says, exhaling with a smile. ""Always was, always will be."

Posted by David | December 19, 2006 6:56 PM
17

The Afghooey is the best I've ever had, and it's grown right smack dab in Seattle. Yum!

Posted by Stoked | December 19, 2006 7:57 PM

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