… Including places where you normally find only criminals.
Once a month, a cardboard box from Colorado appears at the office of a conservative Christian lawmaker in central Georgia, filled with derivatives of marijuana, to be distributed around the state in the shadows of the law.
Operating in ways he hopes will avoid felony charges of drug trafficking, state Rep. Allen Peake, R-Macon, is taking matters into his own hands. He’s shepherding cannabis oil to hundreds of sick people who are now allowed by the state to possess marijuana, but have no legal way of obtaining it.
Nearly all the new state-level cannabis laws, both medical and recreational, contain odd quirks: strange compromises between legalizers and prohibitionists; bizarre signs that lawmakers simply don’t know what they’re doing; provisions to keep pot a boutique business; or contrary provisions (especially as big crony biz realize that legalization is a real thing with real profits to be made from it) to ensure than only the wealthy and connected can enter the trade.
Georgia’s laws are particularly weird. Amid its mostly brutal Reefer Madness-era laws, NORML says Georgia grants one exception: a fairly generous allotment allowing CBD-heavy cannabis extracts for people with certain specified conditions.
Georgia just doesn’t allow its residents to, you know, actually obtain the stuff. Or grow the stuff for themselves.
That’s some quirk.
And it doesn’t look close to changing, even though Rep. Peake, the Freedom Outlaw noted above, is working to liberalize the illiberal law. But until he and his allies can improve matters, he’s personally doing whatever it takes to alleviate suffering. Putting himself on the line in a very serious way in a state whose pot laws are positively medieval … just to do the right thing.
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CBD (cannabidiol), as opposed to the more famous THC (tetrahydrocannibinol), offers no high, and in fact suppresses the THC high. Both cannabinoids have medical benefits, but it’s CBD that’s becoming more prized by many medical patients.
Real, quantifiable data on the effects of cannabinoids against various diseases is hard to come by — thanks to generations of drug warriors preventing medical marijuana from being studied. Such monomaniacal control freaks can still be heard across the land crying, “Marijuana has NO medical benefits!” And they can claim this in part because they’ve personally seen to it that it’s hard for anybody to actually check. (On a side note, these crazed drug warriors have also prevented studies on the evidently very, very beneficial effects of psychoactive drugs like LSD, psylocibin, and mescaline (in clinical or ritualized settings), for easing the agonies of both cancer and some forms mental illness.)
While neither Peake nor anybody else is saying how the cannibis oil he distributes gets to Georgia or who pays for it, Peake’s a wealthy man who’s already put a lot of his money into helping medical marijuana patients:
He’s the CEO of one of the nation’s largest franchise restaurant businesses, with more than 100 locations including Cheddar’s and Fazoli’s. He says he runs this business on biblical principles and donates to Christian charities, a practice that led him into the world of cannabis when he began helping families with the costs of moving to Colorado for the legal access to treatments they couldn’t get in Georgia.
Those connections led to the arrival each month of boxes on his office doorstep, filled with bottles of cannabis oil of varying concentrations within Georgia’s now-legal THC limit.
Peake says he doesn’t know who brings it into the state, and doesn’t ask.
Because … yeah, his pain-allieviating, potentially lifesaving kindness is a felony.
Long live a Great American Outlaw!
Don’t make me praise a politician, Claire. I’d have to run to my safe space and suck my thumb for a while.
Or a bong. Whatever works.
Bong. Definitely go for the bong. Especially considering some of the places those thumbs of yours get into around that desert hermitage.
And now you’ve reminded me of yet another pot-related legal quirk, this one actually pre-legalization. Years ago, a friend took me into a head shop in Tucson. Now, like all headshops, this place was an obvious temple dedicated to the use and enjoyment of you-know-what. It had one whole room full of glass pipes, roach clips, and other tools for smoking. Yet another area was filled with tie-dyed clothing straight out of the 1960s. The walls were adorned with huge posters of Bob Marley, Cheech & Chong, Harold & Kumar. Etc. etc.
And all over the place were signs like this: “DO NOT use the word BONG. These are WATER PIPES for use with LEGAL TOBACCO PRODUCTS ONLY. If you even speak the word BONG, you will be escorted from the store.”
Would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetically sad.
“Peake says he doesn’t know who brings it into the state, and doesn’t ask.”
Sounds like El Rey (Out of the Grey Zone) has connections to Georgia.
One of the big compromises being made in some states is to not allow legal homegrown so that the tax collector can always get his cut out of pot sales.
Oregon is an exception, I recently visited a friend there who was home growing legally, he was nor using it himself but was using it for barter, now that is what freedom is all about!
Keep those seeds children they are going to get as expensive and hard to get as tobacco seeds are if they aren’t already.
While I’m not a user, recreational or otherwise, I think it would be nice if all the states and the Feds adopted a drug plan similar to Portugal.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/portugal-drug-crisis-british-columbia-1.3962714
I know, I’m living in a dream world… sigh…
The 2017 Texas Legislature has 21 marijuana-related bills introduced, most of which lean pro-weed. So far it looks like 20 are dead.
The exception, HB 81, reduces the first three possessions of less than an ounce of MJ a civil infraction. It has a long way to go.
The amount of refer madness raised in defense of virtuous Texans makes me glad it isn’t my hill to die on.
The prize for weirdest, though, is HB 674. It says that students younger than six years old (Who IMHO shouldn’t be in school in the first place.) can’t be suspended out of school unless they get caught with a weapon, commit a violent crime, or (you guessed it) distribute or use drugs, including marijuana.
http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/85R/billtext/html/HB00674I.htm
Sounds like El Rey (Out of the Grey Zone) has connections to Georgia.
Down here we would suspect Zorro.
I lived in Texas, an odd mixture of rugged individualists and bible thumping wackos.
“Sounds like El Rey (Out of the Grey Zone) has connections to Georgia.”
Love it!
“One of the big compromises being made in some states is to not allow legal homegrown so that the tax collector can always get his cut out of pot sales.”
I haven’t kept good track, but I thought WA was the only state with legal pot that didn’t allow any recreational growing at all.
On one hand, I’m surprised and pleased to see any rec. grows allowed. On the other, I can’t see homegrows being that big a threat to the new Pot Powers-that-be, for the same reason that people growing their own tomatoes aren’t considered much of a threat to the Giant Corporate Tomato-Growing Industry.
“Don’t make me praise a politician,”
In this case, Joel, you need not praise a politician. Rather, give praise to a Christian who recognizes that in the war-on-drugs that Caeser is dead wrong; and that helping the suffering (whether on the Sabbath or on the other six days of the week) is, simply, right.
Speaking of outlaws (the other kind)
A mob of teens swarms a (Oakland, Calif.) subway train and robs passengers
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/25/us/bart-train-robbery-trnd/
Happened last weekend. Note how well it’s been covered by the msm?
Homegrown pot? Heh, heh. Reminds me of the old days. When I was a student at U of M Ann Arbor, the fine for being busted for possession of pot by the Ann Arbor cops was $5, but if you got busted by the State it was prison. Ann Arbor was a pot smoker’s ‘sanctuary city’. My roommate used plenty and dealt enough to pay for much of his college education. To cut costs, he decided to grow his own. He gutted his dorm closet, lined the walls with tin foil, installed grow light, and started growing about a dozen plants from seed. These were his babies. He fawned over them, water them carefully, fertilized them, and spritzed them with stuff to make them grow faster. They grew to about 4′ tall. He harvested them and hung them to dry upside down from the dorm room ceiling to be sure all of the precious THC would be retained. He was sure he had the BEST pot anyone could ask for.
Finally, he invited his closest friends to enjoy his little stash of homegrown. They lit the bong and took their hits….an nearly lost their lungs hacking it up. They said it tasted like sh-t, literally. You know, fertilizer.
My roommate gave up the dream of becoming a pot rancher and became a CPA instead.
I recently participated in a thread on FB of a person who’s totally against marijuana usage/legalization, a true prohibitionist who considers those who use marijuana to be weak. I posted that my wife who has cancer has used medical marijuana that was heavy on the cannabidiol side, not because she’s weak, but to relieve her pain from the cancer and side-effects from chemo! I’ve found prohibitionists can be heartless absolutists and judgmental as all get out!
To be honest the only state pot laws I am familiar with to date is WA & OR (haven’t paid detail attention to the rest), agree completely on home grown not being a threat but when it comes to government wanting their pound of flesh it does seem that they will fight hard to not even give up an ounce.
Ron I always found chicken s— to do well for me (but that was in the days before the indoor grow movement) but maybe in a dorm closet that would be problematic? The big question is; did you get high from that sh–?
Then he became a CPA! You know some of the biggest capitalist I have ever known were drug dealers.
“Keep those seeds children they are going to get as expensive and hard to get as tobacco seeds are if they aren’t already.”
When were tobacco seeds hard to find?
My first job was pulling tobacco, I was a laborer not a grower, been a stringer too (in the days where we had horse drawn sleds to put our leaves in & take them from the field) even helped take the harvest to auction, which was fun as a kid, all I know is the grower I worked for protected those seeds of his as being of great value, kinda like a pot grower today who has a strain that he believes to be better than his competition, I bet.
So maybe today tobacco seeds are easy to get, I don’t know but I betcha they’re not the real primo bacca seeds that’s available! In the old days (I haven’t a clue what is done today) at a tobacco auction the growers would have samples of their crop to smell and feel by the buyers and then the buyers would bid on buying your crop; the more you got I bet was also impacted by your reputation of quality from previous crops and that is where those seeds come in again.
To be honest I never liked tobacco (except for a taste acquired of fine cigars in my later years) mainly because when you pulled it and with the morning dew you would get this tar on your hands that would permeate thru your skin and give you this yucky taste that took days to get rid of.
The teenage son of a friend of mine liked to hike in my woods behind the main pasture. I didn’t know that he had a small pot patch.
Trouble was, every time it grew a bit, the deer ate it.
Sad.
But the deer was happy I bet!
Rochesterveteran,
” I’ve found prohibitionists can be heartless absolutists and judgmental as all get out!”
Yes, I was heartless & judgemental. Did a 180 on the issue many years ago.
There is always hope for such people.
Regards,
Iwoots