MTV’s True Life: I’m In The Marijuana Business

http://www.mtv.com/videos/true-life-im-in-the-marijuana-business/1667659/playlist.jhtml#vid=675030

This episode of True Life recently aired on MTV:

Ashes, Chris, Gemma and Pa are young people whose lives revolve around the business of marijuana. Although passionate about their unorthodox professions, these entrepreneurs’ dealings with weed threatens some of their closest relationships.

I don’t know that I completely agree with the cast choosen for this episode. I would like to have seen a variety of established Medical Marijuana Business workers/owners rather than these grassroots start up ventures.

Ashes is your typical household pot dealer, I don’t see anything legitimate about her “business” and for this reason I feel that featuring her as someone ‘in the marijuana business’ has a negative effect on the fight for legalization. It would have been more beneficial to highlight the work of a Budtender at a medical marijuana dispensary.

Chris is working towards his goal of being a grower/vender for medical cannabis dispensaries by going to Oaksterdam University. A word of warning, just because you go to and or graduate from Oaksterdam doesn’t mean you will be granted a spot in the marijuana industry. Since the business is still very much a legal grey area, established dispensaries may tend to keep their operations tight knit.

http://hailmaryjane.com/

Voters deserve facts, not fiction

CO- In his Coloradoan July 2 Soapbox, Ray Martinez made many disparaging claims about medical marijuana centers in order to bolster his attempt to ban MMCs from Fort Collins. Too bad that none of his assertions are supported by facts.

Acting police Chief Jerry Schiager reported no medical marijuana business “surge in crime,” and no increase in 911 calls (1). The ordinance regulating MMCs, passed by Fort Collins’ City Council, is stricter than the state requires (2) In fact, state regulators track every gram of medicine produced by MMCs “from seed to sale” preventing any diversion to “the new black market” (3) as Martinez claims.

Proponents of the ban would also like us to believe, based on anecdotal “evidence,” that marijuana use is up among teens and MMCs are the cause.

Wrong again.

Two studies released this week show the opposite. The National Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse reports that from 1999 to 2010, teen marijuana use dropped 22 percent (4). And a separate nationwide study shows that there is no causal relationship between medical marijuana and an increase in teen marijuana use (5).

MMCs are clearly not the boogey man that Martinez and company would have us believe.

Instead of fear-mongering and fantasy, we need a discussion based on reality.

The people of this state voted to make medical marijuana legal in 2000. Lacking any regulatory framework, Colorado’s state Legislature passed HB1284 in 2010. As a result, Colorado’s licensed MMCs are the most heavily regulated and taxed among all 16 states that allow for medical marijuana use.

Criminals are out. Standards are in place. Taxes are collected. And law enforcement keeps a 24/7 watch to ensure compliance. While this is tedious and expensive for center owners, we know that our customers and community members feel more secure because of the tight restrictions and security.

Reality check:

More than 8,500 people hold valid licenses to purchase medical marijuana in Larimer County. That averages out to more than 16,000 transactions a month, or 200,000 every year.

Let’s imagine for a moment that Martinez gets his way and MMCs disappear. What then?

Patients will lose out. Treatment protocols will be interrupted when the products, services and specialists patients rely upon and trust disappear. This will result in negative health outcomes for patients.

Our economy will suffer. One half-million dollars in sales taxes will go uncollected every year. More than 200 people will lose their jobs. Dozens of commercial leases will be abandoned. Millions of dollars in business investments will be lost. Bankruptcies will soar.

Our neighborhoods will become less safe. Currently, medical marijuana businesses are licensed, regulated, secured, and taxed. If we ban these businesses, medical marijuana sales will be pushed into our neighborhoods where they will be unlicensed, unregulated, unsecured, and untaxed, and increase the risk of illegal sales, fires, and home invasions.

Assuming home growers follow the rules and serve only five patients each, 1,500 homes are needed to serve Larimer County’s 8,500 registered patients. That’s 200,000 sales taking place in 1,500 private homes! Home invasions, electrical fires and chemicals dumped unmonitored into our sewers will become common.

This will be a disaster.

medical marijuana centers are the safest way to ensure that legal patients have access while protecting our community.

Please act to keep MMCs legal in Fort Collins.

Steve Ackerman is a longtime Fort Collins resident and business owner. He is president of the Fort Collins Medical Cannabis Association (FCMCA) and owner of Organic Alternatives. He may be reached at 214-1152. Sources: 1: Schiager, Jerry. Statement to Council. City Council Adjourned Meeting & Work Session, Feb. 22. 2: Agenda Item Summary Feb. 22, Item 3. (n.d.). Agenda Item Summary, Issues Relating to Medical marijuana Businesses, (p. 2). Fort Collins.Fort Collins; 3: (2011). Colorado Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division Rules. Denver: State of Colorado Department of Revenue; 4: National Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, (June 29, 2011). Adolescent Substance Use: America’s #1 Public Health Problem (pg. 28). New York: CASA Columbia; 5: O’Keefe, K. E. a. (June 2011). Marijuana Use by Young People: The Impact of State Laws. Washington D.C.: Marijuana Policy Project.

Federal Forfeiture Laws Punish Legal Medical Marijuana Businesses

If you are involved in marijuana legalization or the marijuana industry, you need to read this

BY EAPEN THAMPY

The federal government is after you. They do not care if your state government has passed laws allowing you to conduct business, whatever facet of the cannabis business you might be in. They do not care if your customers are patients with Ehler-Danlos Syndrome, multiple sclerosis, or terminal cancer. They do not care if you’ve never been involved in a “real” crime in your life, if you pay your taxes on time, or if you go to church. They do not care if you are the mayor of your town or the hobo on the street.

The only thing that these federal law enforcement agencies care about is their money. Because when they raid you, your house, your business…they are looking for cars, houses, and cash.

When they raid you, they will have a chase car on scene. When the jackbooted thugs break down your door, guns blazing, they will search your house and the entirety of your personal effects. If they find any evidence, any mention, of a bank account, of personal wealth…they will take it.

They will take your money before you can hire an attorney to defend you in a court of law, and they will actively try to keep you from using the federal law that allows the provision of counsel for people who can’t afford it.

They will bankrupt you before they charge you with a crime.

If your mother wrote you a check or sent you a bank note, they will seize your mother’s bank account.

If your child has a piggy bank, or perhaps received a large cash gift for a birthday…they will take that too.

If they suspect you are a “drug dealer” they will time their raid to the best of their abilities to catch you with cash. I have found that law enforcement across the country will routinely and uniquely delay the service of warrants in “drug” crimes to maximize seizure revenue, rather than prevent the “drugs” from being sold to the community.

If you are innocent and you have had your property seized, they will threaten you if you attempt to get your property back. I know dozens of people who were hit with criminal charges after they challenged the civil seizure of their property. They will threaten your citizenship status if you look like an immigrant or associate with anyone who is an immigrant.

If you challenge their seizure of your property, they will use a labyrinth of tricks and pitfalls to undermine your efforts.

They will use the law of the high seas, laws designed to deal with violent pirates and terrorists, to persecute you in public and in private.

They will use the law of the high seas, laws designed to deal with violent pirates and terrorists, to persecute you in public and in private.

If you have the temerity to use the money you earn from providing products and services to consenting adults to purchase a nice car or any kind of visible luxury, you are a target.

They will laugh at you when you mention the Constitution or “rights”. Indeed, you may be reported to the FBI or Homeland Security for a “preliminary” assessment that the government does not have the legal obligation to keep a record of. In other words, they can punitively investigate you without telling you or anyone else, and you will have no way to prove what they are doing to you.

They can use the Patriot Act to stalk you and find your property. Because to them, you’re not an American…you’re a cash cow that they can slaughter under the name of “public safety”.

These are people who have no decency, yet occupy positions of power and respect. They will lie, bold-faced and brazen, to a state legislature. Not even the attentions of Congress will provoke respect from them. Agency heads who are invited by Congress to testify on forfeiture abuses have a track record of declining the invitation and sending a subordinate.

These are people who have no problem shredding subpoenaed documents that might prove damaging to them.

They will pay their salaries from the money and property they take from you. They will also buy weapons from the military, because they have the money and the power. They will use tanks and men wearing back masks and machine guns to raid you at night, like the KGB in the Soviet Union.

Some federal agencies have even paid judges directly from forfeiture funds. Impartial justice? I think not.

You will not have a proper record of the property that is taken or who has it. If your property is damaged or destroyed during their raid, they will deny the allegation. If you win your claim, they will claim that they are protected by qualified and absolute immunity.

If you do file a civil rights lawsuit against the government for violation of your rights, get ready for a 5-10 year ordeal. If and when you win your lawsuit, the government will fight the judgment and the payment of attorney’s fees. This is so that other attorneys will think twice before challenging the government.

The issues surrounding marijuana legalizers are not issues of marijuana legalization. They are issues of mercenary law enforcement, people who put on the blue uniform and the badge and go looking for plunder.

eapen.thampy@gmail.com

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