why i am voting "no" on oregon measure 91 to legalize recreational marijuana

legal marijuana is a hot button issue, apparently. and not necessarily the way in which one would think from conservative-minded restrictions.  there are a fair amount of pro-legalization supporters that just assume that voting "yes" is the appropriate means toward their long term ends.

i was called a "ditz" for not being in favor of measure 91. throwing out names without any substantial criticism is not constructive.  all that does is make me imagine how to not be ditzy after i have already spent years contemplating the issue and am quite clear on exactly where i stand.  that doesn't seem ditzy to me.  certainly, it sounds less ditzy than just voting "yes" on something because it sounds cool. some people have given me rationales for why "yes" is the way to go and i am trying to consider those perspectives.

my support of a "no" vote does not constitute that i either (a) don't support the use of marijuana or (b) won't vote yes one of these times anyway.  i don't care what someone else wants to vote, but i would hope they actually consider things to some degree before just voting what feels right.  a bunch of stoners aren't going to get concessions from the government, ever.  the government will screw the people easiest to screw every time.  commoners will never buck the system.  the government is not in the business of conceding power.  they may concede a little now and then, for greater gains in the end, or they may concede the illusion of power to make people feel more empowered, but the reality will always be that the feds will win at chess.  the odds are stacked because the government will always cheat with the law being on their side.

that's why when i vote, it's always to throw a monkeywrench into the discussion.  it doesn't matter what i vote for.  if my vote changed anything, ralph nader would have won the presidency four times, all drugs would be legal and indians would be free range hunting buffalo.  but my vote doesn't matter for anything.  if i do vote "yes" it will be a nod of appreciation to my friends in other states that wish they had the opportunity to do so.  also, in the grand scheme of life, legal weed is coming sooner or later anyway, so we may as well get started down the road.  i predicted back when the talk started up in washington around 2010 that weed would be legal nationally by 2020 and no one believed that. now, i tell people that by 2030 there will be no access to weed simply because of it being legal and people don't want to believe that.

consider what the government does when they get their hands on resources. they ruin everything. i can't trust them with something as valuable as marijuana.

weed hasn't always been illegal.  in fact, all drugs were legal up until 1937 when the food and drug administration was created.  that is, during prohibition when people weren't allowed to drink, they were allowed to smoke weed, shoot black tar, or whatever they felt like because they were grown adults and could do whatever they want to their own bodies.  then, the government let the people have alcohol - at the price of other drugs that weren't as harmful.  so, now people die of liver disease and lung disease from lifetimes of drinking and smoking, while not being allowed to do something that has shown it has a therapeutic value and is not harmful in the least.  but when i say not allowed, i am only referring to the legality, and what does it matter the legality even matter?  a group of politicians met on tax-payer-funded-time, took things away from people, made decisions that affected people negatively and the people had no recourse within the framework of the law.  what kind of person rips people off like that?  turns out americans didn't like that very much.  in the end, people have shown that they don't care about the law and will smoke weed and do whatever they want anyway.

drinking and driving, texting and driving, talking on the phone and driving are all illegal and worse for the community than marijuana, yet we have a rampant problem with most of society doing these things all day everyday. if people are willing to break the law for immoral practices, why would they adhere to the law for things they believed to be good?

and then consider, why was weed ever illegal anyway?  i wrote a blog last year called pipe dreams that basically posited that the government made drugs illegal in order to create a business opportunity for themselves.  the US makes billions annually dealing drugs illegally around the world, such as spending 20 years fighting losing wars in southeast asia to control the heroin trade.  nothing else makes sense for why the vietnam war was fought for so long.  charging a simple 10% or whatever tax on drugs would be chicken feed by comparison to running the trade, taking all the money and controlling entire continents.

so, now, both the government and the people want weed to be legal.  something seems quite fishy about that scenario.  the situation is so ugly that oregon state police have taken out ads on TV urging people to vote yes.  any other time in my life, i only believe cops to the extent that they won't arrest me.  that is, i don't trust cops anymore than i don't trust the politicians that made the laws the cops are enforcing.  so, that is a huge red flag to me when a cop says i should vote to legalize weed.

oregon already has medicinal marijuana for the people that need it.  for the people that don't really "need" it, they can still keep getting it the way they always have.  for the last 25 years, i have been able to get weed.  as it is now, i can get as much as i want, good grade, good price from cool dealers, the situation is pristine.  if one person doesn't have what i want, i can call someone else as if i am going to a different store because one didn't sell dr. pepper.  the system of buying and smoking weed seems to work rather ideally.  messing with that makes no sense.

what could change?
obviously, i grew up in a city and barely can grow a garden, but my feeling is that within the agricultural industry is that the "grow your own" stance is a slippery slope.  whole new arenas for legislation, science and technology open up.  major pharmaceutical or agricultural companies, rather than the black market, will control the production.  companies like monsanto will patent seeds that have been genetically modified (like what has happened with corn) and control the reproduction rights so that people are not able to grow their own.  and if a person is crafty enough to grow it anyway, monsanto can sue them into bankruptcy (as they did with 71-year-old farmer vernon bowman last year).  then, with all the seeds monopolized into one person's hands, they can control distribution.  enter a company like walmart.  they will buy up all the good stuff, force the grower to make it lower quality and then undercut all the local retailers, putting them out of business and then being able to charge what they want.  suddenly it seems harder to procure weed.  and then consider those positive therapeutic effects of marijuana...that also dies with legalization.  major farms will use so many toxicants to protect the cash part of the crop that weed will be laced with so many tars and poisons as tobacco is now that people will start getting lung cancer from weed too.

this can't be about the state making a decision to let people make their own decisions if i already make my own decisions.  yes, we would have the choice, if the choice is still there.  as with alcohol in washington, nobody buys it because the taxes are so damn high.  when some store can charge what they want, then the high tax rate on top of that, people won't be able to afford weed.  but people will buy it anyway.  that kind of thing starts to wreck families the way alcoholic's habits wreck families. the same is nearly true for how ridiculously expensive tobacco is.  who really wants to pay $8 for a pack but still does anyway because they have no other choice?  last time i wanted a cigarette, i went to the one bar that sells singles for 50 cents because that was the best deal for me.  legal drugs suck, financially speaking.  people now can afford weed without a huge strain on finances and can still decide when and where to buy it.  and besides, why would i want to pay the government more taxes? i want to pay the government less taxes.  i only pay what i do now, so they won't put me in jail.  the government already doesn't spend my money the way i want them to.  would that change if i started paying them more?  if you leave the decision to me, the government doesn't get a damn thing.

but as one person pointed out, the black market will still exist.
this is hopeful, but maybe a bit naive.  i barely even have the option of buying a blank t-shirt in la grande without going to walmart.  and though i do, i have to pay three times the price.  what quality would a black market marijuana product have if most people are buying it on the white market?   the black market can still exit in colorado and washington to give people hope, but that when enough states legalize marijuana and it forces the government's hand, the feds will change the game, such as controlling even more of the trade than they currently do.  as it stands now, two states can have a black market because we are all fighting the feds.  but when the feds give up the fight, where will the war be?  we have examples with alcohol and tobacco.  there is not much of a black market for tobacco, people just give in and pay high prices even though technically they could grow their own to use or sell.  there is a black market for moonshine, but i don't want to drink that gut rot.  i need to go to the liquor store for something real.  so when the white market is most of the weed trade, what incentive would i have to buy illegally?  how supported would the black market even be?  i suggest that it would be about as strong as the black market for tobacco and moonshine.  sure, i could buy some cheap, low quality weed as if shopping at the day-old pastry bins, but the value of that wouldn't be worth it.  it is always smarter financially to pay more for the high grade product.  only addicts that can't afford the high grade, go to the low grade and end up spending way more money in the long run. that's the rich exploiting the poor.  when the high grade kush is locked in a case behind the customer service counter, that's where i'll be.  not buying something i can't use on the black market.

it would have been nice to have lived thru the 1920s to have a better idea of how this played out then. but the bottom line was that we still got one drug back at the price of all the others.  i want all drugs to be legal.  even if the government is being honest in their intentions with weed, this is still piece meal allocation.  one legal drug per 80 years is not good enough when we used to have them all.  at this rate, by the year 3000, we might back to where we were in 1937.  that's not what i call progress.  i don't like this half-way, partly legal, partly illegal stuff.  ron wyden continually says we need to give concessions to get anything accomplished in salem and d.c.  ron wyden is a politician.  i am not.  i either want something or i don't.  you either sell it to me, or you don't.

when i voted against legal weed in eugene, people thought i was stupid.  but those same people thought it was a slam dunk to pass and were stupefied to learn that oregon is an extremely conservative state that bows to the feds every time, so really who was stupid?

i will still continue to sign the petitions to let people decide for themselves, and whatever the people want to decide is fine.  if the voters want to make getting weed harder, then so be it.  if the price becomes too much, if the weed gets tainted by commercial farming practices, if the thrill of sneaking around to do something taboo goes away, so be all of that.  i can quit smoking weed and start buying other drugs that are a better deal.  i just don't want uncle sam in between me and my body.  he can't watch me all the time anyway.  still, i would just prefer voters not shoot themselves in the foot, but with conservatives increasingly understanding how legalizing weed will hurt average people,  they are starting to rally with the stoners the same way the feds rallied with the hippies to take away the credibility of the anti-vietnam movement in the 1960s.  voting "yes" is dumb.  every occurrence in history where it seemed like the government was doing the right thing for the people, the people have been screwed over.  ask the indians.  then there was vietnam for the supposed sake of protecting democracy, we busted up the unions, gave away public utilities and the airwaves, started a second war in iraq to stop terrorism even though our enemy terrorists came from saudi arabia, we went to hydraulic fracking to contaminate our water supply for the sake of some quick domestic oil, etc, etc, etc, over and over and over again.  next it's weed that we will lose.  and a million stoners will be supporting that with their vote.

i am not that naive.  after 25 years of illegally smoking weed without any problems, i would have to be a total stoner to want to change that.