Prop 19 has a dark side, something that no one seems to be willing to talk about.  Legalizing the recreational use of marijuana will take away a critical tool used by law enforcement every day; convenient probable cause without a warrant.  Police officers currently can cite the smell of marijuana (whether smoke or unsmoked) as probable cause to search automobiles and enter the homes of anyone they want.  This saves them from the time consuming process of obtaining a warrant when they identify someone who fits the criminal profile.

If Prop 19 passes, law enforcement will be deprived of the probable cause required to search suspected illegal immigrants and other minority groups who are in expensive neighborhoods, driving fancy cars or even hanging on the street corner.

Cannabis was made illegal in America in 1937 with the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act, largely as  largely as an effort of businessmen Andrew Mellon, Randolph Hearst, and the Du Pont family. With the 1934 invention of the decorticator, hemp became a very cheap substitute for paper pulp used in the newspaper industry. Hearst felt that this was a threat to his extensive timber holdings. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury and the wealthiest man in America, had invested heavily in the Du Pont families new synthetic fiber, nylon, which was also being threatened by cheap hemp.

Hearst’s campaign was ahead of its time, a model for conservative public relations and political campaigns ever since. Recognizing that he couldn’t win a rational policy argument,  Hearst created a social argument instead; a double barrel approach that combined fear of black people with hatred and distrust of Mexicans. This mixture of hate and fear has proven to be tremendous winner, a go to strategy that corporations and conservative politicians have been able to use ever since to manipulate the masses.

Instead of outlawing “cannabis,” or hemp, the law cleverly used the Spanish term “marihuana”, making it the only law in the United State federal statutes that names an outlawed substance in a foreign language but not in English.  The newspaper campaign  for the act featured pictures of Mexican men with donkeys and bails of cannabis in the West and Southwest, while in the industrial north was treated to the film Reefer Madness and the south was treated to stories about how smoking marijuana made white women have sex with black men.

The intent of marijuana prohibition was to control production of commercial hemp in the U.S. and protect the paper and chemical industries.  Fortuitously, it has proven to be a very effective tool for the state and federal government to control black and Latino men. It has not, however, proven effective in controlling the sexuality of white women, which is still the traditional role of Christianity.

for more info on how you can help stop the insanity.

At the age of 17, I became the largest pot dealer in a Bay Area suburb of 50,000 people.  Over the next ten years, I made millions of dollars as a black collar professional.   Some  of you will cast me as a villain,  a one dimensional Hollywood caricature making money while destroying young people’s lives; but the reality is I am an entrepreneur who just found a niche meeting America’s insatiable demand for marijuana. And even when I started at 15,  85% of my clientele were adults, not young people.

How did I do it?

I provided a high quality product at a reasonable price with  fantastic customer service.   Like many other black collar professionals,  I used the Internet (especially Craigslist) to find new customers.  I built an organization with a network of good people and trained them to be reliable: never flake on an appointment,  stay open until late at night, and provide home delivery.   I am no different than the guys who started Dominos, Papa Johns or even high flying tech companies like Broadcom.  The only difference is that what I sell is technically illegal.  And I want it to stay that way…

The proponents of Prop 19 paint it as some great leap forward for freedom. According to these “forward thinkers” Prop 19 will:

1. allow for more control over the use of marijuana;
2. decrease government expenditures on the ineffective “War on Drugs;”
3. reduce imprisonment of minorities and poor people, who are typically the only ones incarcerated for marijuana possession;
4. increase state and city tax revenues.

But I don’t buy any of that.  What Prop 19 is really about is the increasing “corporatization” of this country and our culture.  If anything, it’s a giant step backwards for freedom.

Let’s look at the facts:

1. According to Jon Gettman of DrugScience.org, Marijuana is a $35B cash crop, making it the most valuable crop in the U.S.
2. As everyone knows state tax revenues have been on the decline for years
3. When corporations’ core business is on the decline they use the cash these businesses generate to fund new high-growth opportunities

Prop 19 does the same thing to hard-working pot dealers that Home Depot or WalMart moving into town does for other mom & pop businesses.  It will replace high paying jobs held by passionate employees with sub-standard wages and cheap, low quality imports.  I currently support ten employees making a good living.  On average each of them has been working with me for six years.  They all work hard and make much more than they could ever make working in some dead end retail job.  We believe in giving back to our community.  Over the years we have been a regular sponsor of young entrepreneurs.  Via mentoring and investment we have created franchises in neighboring cities and helped dozens of small businesses get off the ground..

I am not afraid of competition.  I think any true entrepreneur sees it as a chance to improve their game.  But I am afraid Prop 19 is going to put me out of business and force me to change my career to something morally bankrupt, such as affiliate marketing.

for more information on how to stop the insanity.

Tweet

DEA Raids California Home

Vote No On Proposition 19

Prop 19 will create new and intrusive government regulations while destroying one of the most lucrative industries in California. It’s another populist initiative that seduces voters into approving more unnecessary,  job-killing regulations while inviting federal agents to kick down the doors of ordinary citizens.  Like Obama’s knee jerk off-shore drilling ban and regulations that put more than 10,000 people out of work in Louisiana and Texas, Prop 19 regulations will destroy jobs.

Ending the prohibition will have a devastating impact on the growers and dealers who have built companies and careers producing and distributing Cannabis as well as other  people whose livelihood depends on the marijuana industry. By allowing local governments to issue regulations affecting millions of consumers, Prop 19 will destroy thousands of small businesses in the Emerald Triangle that depend on cannabis dollars,  such as the community BMW and Mercedes dealers, massage therapists, gourmet restaurants and retail stores.

Javier Peña, DEA Special Agent in charge of eradication in Mendocino from 2004-2008 summarized the economic importance of the marijuana industry:

“Pot is the money maker. It’s hard to get the young kids to work at fast-food places because they’re out tending these marijuana groves. They’re cutting the plants. They’re seeding. They’re trimming the buds. They’re driving around $40,000, $50,000 vehicles—and it’s all because they’re helping these marijuana growing operations.  You have a lot of young people making $50,000, $100,000, $300,000. Cash.”

“Growers and dealers are tired of being type cast as villains,’ said one young grower as he scrambled some tofu for breakfast. “My girlfriend and I dropped out of college 18 months ago and we made almost $250,000 last year.  I hope to double that this year.  People say we are are only making money because pot is against the law and that our jobs are somehow less valuable to society than factory workers or computer programmers, but we are just trying to make a living.  The lame stream media demonize us the same way they did Capone and the Chicago mob during prohibition, but there were hardly any drug related shootings up here in the last decade.    Americans have a constitutional right to make money and it shouldn’t matter if you do it cutting down 2,000 year old trees, drilling holes in the ground to extract 200 million year old fossils, making wine or growing weed.”

Estimates of the value of the marijuana industry vary widely, from $10 billion a year all the way up to $120 billion.  The average value of the crop, assessed with different methodologies, puts annual figures for the U.S. industry at around $35 billion and the California crop alone at about $14 billion.  This money fuels high paying jobs for hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom would otherwise have low skilled, low paying jobs in fast food and service industries.  While removing the prohibition on recreational use in favor of a regulatory approach like that of alcohol and tobacco may increase demand slightly, it will immediately reduce prices by at least 90%.  As Peña puts it:

One of the main reasons for marijuana’s enormous profits  stems from one simple fact: Pot is illegal …  individuals that choose to traffic in marijuana are taking a risk (of being arrested). They must be compensated for that risk via inflated profits.

Even the most vocal marijuana advocates agree that, should it become a legal commodity, the industry will be devastated.   Dale Gieringer, head of the California’s chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, (NORML), predicts the actual value of marijuana could plummet.  “It really isn’t worth more than a stem of parsley,” he says. “It’s not expensive to grow. It doesn’t cost a lot.”

Say no to Proposition 19 and protect the  hundreds of thousands of hard working people who have no other employable skills but still manage to scrape by in the cash economy.  In today’s economy,  we cannot afford new government regulations that will put people out of work and destroy a home grown industry that has thrived in California for more than 40 years.  25 years ago, the federal government’s Campaign Against Marijuana Production (CAMP) caused widespread devastation to local industry, real estate, and local schools; it took over a decade for the industry and the region to recover.  Legalizing imports while inviting millions of California citizens to suddenly become marijuana producers will be a one-two punch that causes widespread devastation in Northern California, where  the outgoing agriculture commissioner of Mendocino County estimates that marijuana production is responsible for about 2/3rds of all economic activity in the county.

for more info on how you can stop the insanity.

Tweet

In 2006, ABC News reported that marijuana is the U.S.’s #1 cash crop at over $36 Billion each year.

In the report, Gettman, a marijuana reform activist and leader of the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, champions a system of legal regulation.

Contrasting government figures for traditional crops — like corn and wheat — against the study’s projections for marijuana production, the report cites marijuana as the top cash crop in 12 states and among the top three cash crops in 30.

The study estimates that marijuana production, at a value of $35.8 billion, exceeds the combined value of corn ($23.3 billion) and wheat ($7.5 billion).