Canned Food And The Decriminalization Debate

Here’s something on the marijuana decriminalization debate.

Last week as the Washington state legislature gutted the decency from a pending medical marijuana bill, the City of Eureka was finally at a point to permit a marijuana dispensary to operate in town (the biggest hang-ups over what can be advertised now resolved), and one of the medical marijuana shops in Bakersfield continued to sponsor a popular canned food-for-marijuana program.

Certainly progress on the decriminalization front.  Arcata doesn’t even have a food-for-marijuana program. And I haven't heard of a similar program in Denver, where it's said  more cannabis consumption goes on than drinking Starbucks coffee.

It’s a fact that Washington’s governor, Chris Gregoire,  requested special opinions from the two U.S. attorneys in her state on the legal repercussions of a state law violating federal rules against marijuana. They advised against it because of the legal liability that the law would impose on state employees as they violated federal law. Although fifteen states now have decriminalized marijuana to some degree, with what seemed to be a meme- cake-like belch,  Ms. Gregoire announced that she will not sign the bill.

Legal marijuana in Bakersfield has turned out to be a good thing as six cans of chili is the exchange rate for one joint - "up to forty eight cans a month". Yet food for the needy aside, in a place where it’s illegal to have an outside barbecue because of the unhealthy quality of the air, drug trade violence is rampant,  and where people are employed by the county to drive around in little white trucks with thermo detection devices ready to give citations to homes using fire places illegally, the continued normalization of cannabis use there I bet will be exciting to watch.

Here’s to  the day when our lives are no longer impacted by the marijuana prohibition trade. On that day we’ll think about other things, like maybe how hemp can be used to make cars that run on batteries.