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California will Vote on Recreational Pot in Nov

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jump /injack

Member
Veteran
Lots of new posters just coming on pushing for the new legislation that will ruin Cannabis. None of the old growers who have been doing this for decades seem to see any good in a new law that puts a politician in every man's closet in order to insure that taxes are to be paid. Why would anyone would trust the Democrats after what the IRS pulled on organizations trying to get tax exemptions, google Lois Lerner of the IRS and others who worked for the Democrats. This kind of money thrown into the "General Fund" for the likes of those that voted against Proposition 215 is insane, you're putting your cock on the chopping block.
 

iBogart

Active member
Veteran
Lots of new posters just coming on pushing for the new legislation that will ruin Cannabis. None of the old growers who have been doing this for decades seem to see any good in a new law that puts a politician in every man's closet in order to insure that taxes are to be paid. Why would anyone would trust the Democrats after what the IRS pulled on organizations trying to get tax exemptions, google Lois Lerner of the IRS and others who worked for the Democrats. This kind of money thrown into the "General Fund" for the likes of those that voted against Proposition 215 is insane, you're putting your cock on the chopping block.

Again dude, more misinformation. Not every grower is against it. No, politicians aren't going to be hiding in your closet grow.

We want legalization. A product we want to consume in our bodies. I, as a consumer, want to know how, what, where, this product was produced. I want it tested for chemicals, for composition. And yes, this process cost money. Money in the form of taxes. You want legalization, that's the pill you have to swallow, cause that's what the consumers want, and it's what they deserve. Not your pesticide laden, moldy bud, grown in a dank corner of your trailer out in BFE Clearlake county.
 

Chunkypigs

passing the gas
Veteran
No one is doing any "greasing" just negotiating like any new business would when there is going to be a major 1/4 acre facility built in there jurisdiction. Our little city has already been helping us since the first of this year, having local contractors come out and help with the whole design. My business partner sits in on all the major town hall meetings, and since we are both local college students with land, (Chem major, and biology major) we have been helping write definitions for the upcoming ordinances, and are close(know by name)with all 5 members of the city planning comity and mayor. If you work with your local government you would be surprised what you could get done. Pictures to come in 2017 when we are hoping to have all permits finalized(dependent upon AUMA vote) and building constructed. We just have land at the moment and supply local biodynamic certified strawberries, peppers, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, and any extra medicinal herbs we dont end up using at the local farmers market. All im saying is, if you already have a farm up n' going with Legal water rights and proper zoning, then you have no problem. Just get a local lawyer, and a federal lawyer on retainer with an accountant and if you'r lucky like me you minored in finance. If you truly love to garden and are a skilled farmer, there are a ton of investors right now looking to get you into the right facility set up with the "right" people. Get motivated to farm and get motivated to move into the new era of cannabis business, we all know AUMA isn't perfect, but with a democratic majority in california's house it will be very easy to amend after its already been voted in.

you really don't get it. these are the most valuable permits ever to be issued in history.
college students who don't know the difference between there and their are not going to win in this game just because they know their mayor.
there will be some desperate localities vying for a piece of the pie and willing to permit anything that brings them some quick cash but then you
will be swimming in the deep water of the state licensing.
that's where the big money sits and the people with real political grease get their way.

think of how many farmers there are with thousands of acres that want a part of this. and the ranchers.

then you have all the legal billions in the CA booze industry ready to jump into the market with everything in place including political relationships (PAST DONATIONS) with the state politicians who decide.

Licenses are pretty cheap, much cheaper than the other states. Also they are not limiting the boutique style gardens and actual people with medical needs to grow there own/have a caregiver. If you look at AUMA a caregiver can still garden for up to 5 people in no more than 500sq.ft. If you need more room, then just apply for a simple boutique license and go up to 3000sq.ft. All the AUMA is going to change is this god damn grey area we are all operating in as of right now. Do you really think, if your a caregiver that harvest 20lbs in your legal 500sq.ft, that cops are really looking for that? No, So dont be stupid, like you operate right now i hope, and the laws are actually better for you. Right now in some areas of california like the Central Valley if you have over an ounce on you, you might get a night in jail and a 1000 dollar fine, have over a 1lb and you might face up to a year or more(depending on skin color). With the New AUMA under a LB is only a fine and over a LB has a maximum penalty of 6 months where as right now a judge could give you over a year.... I dont see the difference other then now with AUMA and MMRSA there will be a state database the cops can look into to see, your doctor recommends up to 1 pound of flower at a time for extraction purposes and voids the whole Jail/court/Fine problem all together because your "taking the product to your buddy who has the legal extraction equipment" I recommend to all you AUMA haters out there to Lawyer up, Get educated and compete with the rest of us or go elsewhere to break the law with your carpet bagged product. Im for making sure all product going to our MEDICAL patients is lab tested and SAFE for all to consume, even the sick. Lets separate the Medical from Recreational and regulate it properly to give money back to the cities and towns to better schools and Law enforcement to drive back gangs and cartels a bit. Thank you to all who took the time to listen :) Im currently working right now with A few local collectives and Law Enforcement to open a Legal 3000sq.ft grow following all local AG/Water/electric/building/security/business/codes. And i can tell you, if your trying to do right by the locals, they will make the process go quite smooth once they realize how much money one 3000sq.ft facility produces. Out of sight out of mind money can be that change a town needs to build a new science/art center for the High School or add another cop to patrol to keep the town that much safer. Im for regulation and working with adults, like an adult business owner which unfortunately, many people in this industry are not...

dude you're high. CA will not look like CO or WA.
they paved the way for outlaws to get in on the ground floor but when you go up for one of the few boutique permits
you will be competing against Spielberg's nephew, some guy with 5 auto dealerships and a rancher with 50 million in assets.

nobody will look close enough at your prospectus to notice your punctuation.

all the money in the world is looking to invest in the permitted CA cannabis market.

in 2018 CA médical shrinks to a size that the biggest players already have a lock on.

Harborside will grow their own weed to sell, at least the low and midrange anyways.
the folks with large legal medical business will crush what's left of 2018 mmj.

you will have to be really sick to get a medical card when there's a legal CA recreational market.

you just miss the magnitude of this transfer of black market income into the legal politically controlled financial system.
and it's a cash business as long as fed prohibition holds. Yee-Haw!

they will have so much tax money to throw at LEO and compliance that they will put a real big dent into the amount of Cali weed sent east.

the little guy is about to get crushed if you can see his grow from the sky.

this article spells it out if you don't want to take my word for it.
my spelling sucks too BTW so I'm not trying to personally attack you.

it would be great if Cali left a place for a little guy like you from the black market at the legal table.
and they did, working for a capitalist in his garden if you are lucky enough to be felony free...

IS CALIFORNIA’S COTTAGE CANNABIS INDUSTRY ABOUT TO GO UP IN SMOKE?

By Piper McDaniel
MAY 3, 2016

An aerial photograph of Trinity Pines, a subdivision of Hayfork.
02Weed.jpg


From out-of-work loggers to struggling students, thousands of Golden State growers eke out a living on small-scale marijuana farms. But full legalization may deliver the hardest hit yet.

Dan is a jovial and twinkly-eyed man. He smiles and talks amiably as he unloads hay to feed a solitary cow and a few pack mules. Moving around his farm, he is enveloped by expansive grasses and sky that protect him from any evidence of neighbors or civilization.

A fifty-year-old out-of-work logger, Dan was born and raised in Hayfork, a small Northern California town tucked away in the mountains of Trinity County. Hayfork is a rural, isolated place — chain grocery stores, big banks and hospitals are at least a two-hour drive in any direction. Dan has lived in these mountains the majority of his life and he has a rural skillset — he knows how to hunt, farm and can. He fells trees and raises livestock. He is also a third generation cannabis farmer.

“It’s just kind of in the blood from being a kid,” he says. Dan grew up in a household where cannabis farming was an ordinary part of life. His father and grandfather, also loggers, farmed small amounts of cannabis for personal use. He can remember buds hanging in his bedroom as a kid, curing (drying out) until they were ready for consumption. In high school, he trimmed cannabis plants at farms in town for extra cash. Decades later, when he was laid off from his logging job, Dan turned to cannabis farming to make ends meet; it’s since become his primary source of income.

Like most cannabis farmers in Trinity County, Dan has an outdoor grow. This set-up typically means there is one large annual crop that is planted around May and harvested in the fall. Garden sizes can vary from eight or ten plants to thousands, depending on who is farming. The Trinity County sheriff’s office says that the average garden size for Trinity County is one hundred to 150 plants. The yield per plant varies as well, but a typical range is two to four pounds per plant.

Also like many cannabis farmers, Dan straddles legal and illegal activity. A lot of cannabis farmers in California sell in part, if not entirely, through the black market. This usually means that product is sold in bulk at wholesale prices and transported elsewhere by middlemen who vend to others down the supply chain.

03Weed-e1462283857421.jpg


California is full of people like Dan, people who have found the cannabis trade to be their best financial option and are operating amid convoluted and changing regulations. When Proposition 215 passed in 1996, it legalized medical cannabis, allowing patients to grow cannabis for their own use, or to have a caregiver grow for them. But the voter initiative did not outline, nor was it followed by, a regulatory system. While medical cannabis regulations today can easily exceed one hundred pages, this proposition was a single page. There were no clear guidelines for garden size or production limits, no framework for what qualified someone to be a medical cannabis patient in the first place, no licensing scheme for producers, no quality control standards – nothing. Further, cannabis has remained federally illegal, hampering the state’s ability to effectively regulate it, and so California’s few rules have remained vague and mostly unenforceable for two decades. In the resulting legal gray area, a thriving cannabis farming community was born.

In the absence of state or federal guidelines, regulations have varied from county to county. Some have banned cannabis and others have tried to regulate the shops that have cropped up – sometimes by the hundreds in places like Los Angeles County. People in the industry generally have fallen into two main groups: thouse who take advantage of loose laws to produce cannabis for the black market, and those trying their best to comply in a state where compliance hadn’t been defined. Over time, the line between these two groups has gotten very blurred.

Long before Prop 215, northern California, with its favorable growing conditions and affordable land, illegally supplied cannabis to much of the state and, sometimes, the country. Following Prop 215, cannabis production began steadily rising until it became rampant. In Hayfork alone, a town with a population of 2,368 according to the most recent census, the Trinity County sheriff’s department estimates there are two thousand cannabis farms, operated by long-term residents as well as new arrivals. Throughout California, production is endemic. It would take an army of farmers to support California’s estimated billion-dollar cannabis trade, and that army now exists.

So who are the men and women supporting California’s cannabis trade? They are retirees, college graduates, single parents, and often people with legitimate jobs seeking another avenue for income. And they all rely on the cannabis industry, to varying degrees, to maintain their lives.


After decades of growth, California’s cannabis cultivation industry is entering a period of rapid change, and the livelihoods of many individuals are tied to the form it takes. New regulations to shape the future of the industry will have a significant role in determining who will become –and who can remain – a cannabis farmer.

04Weed-e1462284002825.jpg


In 2015, Senate Bill 643 and Assembly Bills 243 and 266 established a comprehensive statewide regulatory framework for medical cannabis production and sales. These bills created seventeen different cannabis business licenses, more than any other state. There will be ten licensing and fee tiers for cultivation, one for laboratory testing, two for manufacturing, two for retail sales and one each for transportation and distribution. This new regulatory setup will pave the way to legitimizing the industry, giving local and state governments an apparatus for management and access to tax revenue. Some estimates put the state’s medical cannabis sales in the billions, but California only collected $49.5 million from $570 million in taxable income in 2014. While 1,623 dispensaries are registered with the Board of Equalization, nobody knows the exact number of shops that have come and gone, or their actual sales over the years.

Inside this framework, the place for small-scale cultivators in the legitimate industry is unclear. Accessibility will depend on many factors, but the costs of licenses, permits and distribution will be a key barrier to access for some. These particulars are still being determined. California’s cannabis industry, which continues to grow in the nation’s most populous state, is attracting deep-pocketed investors from around the country. Now, as cannabis is slowly lifted out of an era of amorphous law, the future for farmers like Dan is uncertain.

Tom, Dan’s father, is 74. (Both men’s names have been changed at their request.) He is retired, lives off of Social Security, and supplements his income with earnings from his son’s cannabis operation. “I grew in the ’70s,” says Tom, who often struggled to support his four sons on seasonal work and low wages. “I grew it right there in my garden. I smoked most of it them years and I got to selling it if I needed something, like a car. I sure as hell didn’t have enough to buy a car or anything. In them days it was worth $3,400 to $4,000 a pound.”

Trinity, Mendocino and Humboldt counties became early hubs of farming following Prop 215, giving rise to the “Emerald Triangle,” an area now thick with cannabis production. There are so many people farming in the Emerald Triangle, and throughout California, that a glut of production has dropped prices – the going rate for a pound is $1,000 to $1,200.

These days Tom makes ends meet for himself and his wife, who is also retired, by working with his son. He usually helps with de-leafing and “bucking down,” parts of production in which he removes bigger leaves and stems from buds to prep them for curing. This task suits Tom because he recently had a pacemaker installed and can only do work while sitting down. The income Dan pays Tom allows him to afford medicine and small comforts, like going out to dinner from time to time.

“I’d be lucky to get another job at 74,” comments Tom. “I wouldn’t have nothing if it wasn’t for weed.”

Dan, like his father, has dabbled in the underground cannabis industry for most of his life. Even when he was employed in the logging industry, making ends meet was difficult.

“When I’ve worked, it was a decent wage, but it was seasonal,” Dan explains. “And you get unemployment, but unemployment times are always leaner than employment times. And [cannabis income] was always a nice thing to have. That made things more secure.”

In recent years, after being laid off from forest work, he has turned to cannabis as a primary source of income. His modest farm pays his bills and gives him a little extra, while allowing him to employ his father, a few farmhands, and a crew of six retirees who work during harvest.

Hayfork was primarily a logging town during the ’70s and ’80s, with two active mills. Then, in the mid ’80s, increasing attention to public forest management and a host of new environmental regulations began slowly clamping down on the industry. In 1991, Hayfork’s last remaining sawmill closed and 180 people lost their jobs. Much of the population was plunged into poverty and unemployment. More than a dozen long-time Hayforkers confirmed in interviews that residents had already been illegally farming cannabis in the mountains of Trinity County for decades. But in the economic devastation that followed the collapse of their timber industry, many more loggers began growing and selling to help support their livelihood.

ICmag member or RIU??? vote in the comment section.
05Weed-e1462284055412.jpg


It is our best estimate there are 40,000 independently owned marijuana [farms] in California,” says Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the pro-cannabis lobbyist group the California Growers Association, “creating about 250,000 good, paying jobs and many of those are jobs created in rural, poor, underserved communities.”

Characterizing the average incomes of cannabis farmers is difficult, because profitability depends on many factors – garden size, yield, market, environmental factors, and labor costs. It can vary from what amounts to part-time minimum-wage earnings to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

California’s new regulatory system is expected to be operational by 2018, and anyone participating in the cannabis industry will be required to have a license by then. Existing farmers and new businesses are gearing up for these changes, but the costs for business operations and licensure could be cost prohibitive for those without investment income to back them. A six-figure fee to grow and sell, for example, wouldn’t be unusual. In New York, where medical cannabis sales began in 2015, licensing to manufacture and sell costs $210,000, and that doesn’t include additional costs such as taxes, employee wages, insurance, product testing and distribution.

County fees and licenses will also be added on, and outdoor farmers in particular will face a host of regulations relating to land and water use, including new cannabis-specific regulations that are being developed in response to the significant toll widespread unregulated farming has taken on land and watersheds.

These new regulations will indeed help to alleviate ongoing negative environmental effects of rampant unregulated cultivation, while also benefitting consumers and public safety. But there are many livelihoods tied to the current gray-market system, and for them, viable access to the legitimate market is key.

Cumulatively, these costs may pave the way for corporate or big business takeovers of the market, in effect limiting participation for the tens of thousands of existing small-scale farms that pioneered the state industry.

Kristin Nevedal, director of the Patient Focused Certification Program at Americans for Safe Access, a patient advocacy nonprofit, says the regulations being unveiled will make operations costs unaffordable for most existing farmers.

“The costs that farmers are accustomed to today,” says Nevedal, “are going to exponentially increase simply because of regulation.”

Nevedal compares the new medicinal cannabis regulatory model to the post-prohibition system for regulating alcohol, in which cost and complexity prevented small-scale alcohol producers from being protected in the transition to a regulated industry.

“In the alcohol regulation model, after prohibition ended,” explains Nevedal, “the regulations were so onerous, and the activities involved in maintaining compliance were so expensive, that only the very largest corporations survived. A lot of the small brands got bought up by the large corporations that could afford the amount of money necessary to enter the regulated environment. So while you see craft breweries now, they took almost one hundred years to exist.”

For farmers like Dan, the ability to be legitimate could also be undone quickly if, for example, the local government doesn’t allow cultivation on land parcels the size of his – two acres – or in rural residential zones. These rules will be decided at a county level, and also become key in determining who will get to farm. Shasta County, Trinity’s neighbor to the east, has banned outdoor cultivation and adopted stringent policies limiting farming, while Humboldt County has developed considerably more lenient ordinances that support the economic growth of cannabis cultivation.

“It’s very important to provide an opportunity to those small businesses,” Hezekiah Allen says of the state and local governments. “With so many depending on this industry, and the size of the economy, with new policy they can’t really afford to get it wrong.”

These small farmers face yet another hurdle in the form of recreational legalization, which will legitimize the second component of the industry – the non-medical users who access cannabis through the medical system – and will define the players in the decades to come. The Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA), a recreational use initiative, may be on the state ballot this November if it is able to garner enough signatures. The AUMA initiative has $2.25 million in backing so far, including $1 million from Sean Parker, former Facebook President and Napster co-founder. It has the support of the Drug Policy Alliance and the endorsement of Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, among other big names and organizations.

According to Allen, the AUMA represents a significant shift in the protection currently offered to small farms.

“There’s a pretty firm consensus with policymakers,” reports Allen, “that the easiest way to limit big business in farming is to limit cultivation size. Current [farm size] regulations have a one-acre maximum. The AUMA doesn’t have that.”

* * *

Tom and Dan are far removed from the larger forces at play. Like many farmers, they are waiting to see what happens, and in the meantime growing while they still can. Seated in the worn building they use to cure cannabis, Dan, having worked a full day splitting firewood and caring for his farm and livestock, opens a beer and settles into a beat-up chair to rest momentarily. It’s getting dark outside and Tom sits down too, relaxing a minute before he goes home.

Dan, sitting next to his father, sips a Bud Light and muses about cannabis farming.

“I think it should be legal,” Dan says, “creating a market where you can market what you have made…like a farmers market selling tomatoes, would be a good thing.”

Dan is in favor of the benefits regulation could bring, but is also acutely aware of how easily regulation could strip away his livelihood, and his ability to provide for the man sitting beside him.

“I would show up and pay in advance,” he says, “Cash up to ten thousand bucks, for the right to just grow and be left alone, and know that I was legal.”

In the end, the chances of Dan’s ten thousand dollars buying his ability to farm legally are getting slimmer and slimmer. Louder voices are at the policy table, and one by one regulations are layering on costs. The future for Dan and his father is uncertain, and he doesn’t have a lot of say in the outcome.

“[I have] two employees that work forty hours a week,” Dan says. “So that contributes to the local economy and contributes to their well being…I just still after all this time cannot see the wrong in that. I can’t convince myself that what I’m doing is wrong.”

* * *

Piper McDaniel is the Communications and Community Outreach Coordinator at The Watershed Research and Training Center and works as a freelance journalist. The views expressed here do not represent the WRTC. View her recent work on the marijuana industry at thegrowingdivide.com.
 

iBogart

Active member
Veteran
you really don't get it. these are the most valuable permits ever to be issued in history.
college students who don't know the difference between there and their are not going to win in this game just because they know the mayor.
there will be some desperate localities vying for a piece of the pie and willing to permit anything that brings them some quick cash but then you will be swimming in the deep water of the state licensing.
that's where the big money sits and the people with real political grease.

think of how many farmers there are with thousands of acres that want a part of this. and the ranchers.

then you have all the legal billions in the CA booze industry ready to jump into the market with everything in place including political relationships (PAST DONATIONS) with the state politicians who decide.



dude you're high. CA will not look like CO or WA.
they paved the way for outlaws to get in on the ground floor but when you go up for one of the few boutique permits
you will be competing against Spielberg's nephew, some guy with 5 auto dealerships and a rancher with 50 million in assets.

nobody will look close enough at your prospectus to notice your punctuation.

all the money in the world is looking to invest in the permitted CA cannabis market.

in 2018 CA médical shrinks to a size that the biggest players already have a lock on.

Harborside will grow their own weed to sell, at least the low and midrange anyways.
the folks with large legal medical business will crush what's left of 2018 mmj.

you will have to be really sick to get a medical card when there's a legal CA recreational market.

you just miss the magnitude of this transfer of black market income into the legal politically controlled financial system.
and it's a cash business as long as fed prohibition holds. Yee-Haw!

they will have so much tax money to throw at LEO and compliance that they will put a real big dent into the amount of Cali weed sent east.

the little guy is about to get crushed if you can see his grow from the sky.

this article spells it out if you don't want to take my word for it.
my spelling sucks too BTW so I'm not trying to personally attack you.

it would be great if Cali left a place for a little guy like you from the black market at the legal table.
and they did, working for a capitalist in his garden if you are lucky enough to be felony free...

Prices will fall once legalized. Small scale growers won't make a living, unless they got some special cut.

I'm not in this for every backwoods grower in Norcal. Majority of them are from out of state anyway, polluting the rivers and streams and leaving trash everywhere. Good riddance i say!

It's far past time to bring this above ground with proper 21st century regulations for a product we will be consuming in our bodies.
 

jump /injack

Member
Veteran
Business in California is pulling out as the Democrats are letting in Mexican Nationals in the millions, there are no jobs, housing is gone and the biggest business in California is the UHaul business. I saw on Drudge that the [American] jobless is at an all time high of over 94,000,000 where as the illegals here been allowed in is over 25,000,000. Texas will have more Californians than Texans and its because the People trusted the Democrat. After "you can keep your doctor if you want your doctor" and "Fast and Furious" and 400 other lies why are people so trusting, you've had your chain yanked, been corn-holed and been laughed at by Obama's Professor Gruber who called the American electorate stupid. The IRS is fixed, the DOJ is fixed and tax theft is rampant, its hard to believe that anyone trusts any politician. You are being played for a sucker again. No money to the State, all Cannabis tax money to go for Cannabis research like was done in Israel and now is Spain. No money for the politicians of Sacramento they can't even fix the canals and dams which the state depends on, they blew the money for the Guards Unions pension funds for votes and a fucking bullet train to no where built in China by slave labor.
 
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iBogart

Active member
Veteran
Business in California is pulling out as the Democrats are letting in Mexican Nationals in the millions, there are no jobs, housing is gone and the biggest business in California is the UHaul business. I saw on Drudge that the [American] jobless is at an all time high of over 94,000,000 where as the illegals here allowed in and working by the Democrats is over 25,000,000. Texas will have more former Californians soon than Texans and its because the People trusted the Democrat. After "you can keep your doctor if you want your doctor" and "Fast and Furious" and 400 other lies why are people so trusting, you've had you chain yanked and been corn-holed and been laughed at by Professor Gruber who call the American electorate stupid. The IRS is fixed, the DOJ is fixed and tax theft is rampant, its hard to believe that anyone trusts any politician. You are being played for a sucker again. No money to the State, all Cannabis tax money to go for Cannabis research like was done in Israel and now is Spain. No money for the politicians of Sacramento they can't even fix the canals and dams which the state depends on, they blew the money for the Guards Unions pension funds for votes and a fucking bullet train to no where built in China by slave labor.

Whoa Dude. Do you always try and derail thread topics? Christ.
 
Read the fucking text... You're still eligible for a term in jail if you carry over an ounce... I forgot how alcohol users have to be very careful to carry only 6 and not 7 beers on them without facing incarceration..

No. FUCK that. That's not legalization that's hardly better than what's going on right now. Jack Herer died while campaigning against Prop 19, I'll never support AUMA. 6 plant limit per residence AUMA, ONE ounce limit per adult AUMA, WeedMaps advertising kickback AUMA..

Remember sb420? It was struck down as unconstitutional in the supreme court because the legislature has no authority to tamper with a citizens initiative such as Prop 215. Well this "legalization" initiative includes alterations to Prop 215 such as requiring you and your doctor to register with state issued cards, destroying your privacy.. As well as being the "citizens initiative" needed to implement the MMRSA without altering the CA constitution...

Like I said READ IT and tell me you don't see how much of a convoluted piece of shit this is.. ALL WHILE DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO EMPTY THE STATE PRISON SYSTEM OF CANNABIS PRISONERS...

Nailed it. Of all the contentious aspects of burgeoning legalization, the fact that you can still do jail time in many of the legal states is perhaps the most disappointing, and a fact that many laypersons may not be aware of. Not the time to settle for half measures, and no one deserves to do time for weed, I don't care how much they have.
 

iBogart

Active member
Veteran
Nailed it. Of all the contentious aspects of burgeoning legalization, the fact that you can still do jail time in many of the legal states is perhaps the most disappointing, and a fact that many laypersons may not be aware of. Not the time to settle for half measures, and no one deserves to do time for weed, I don't care how much they have.

Jail time is bad, mkay? We get it. The limitations on personal plant counts and flower amounts is to formulate reasonable guidelines to distinguish between someone who is trying to circumvent the regulations, aka bootlegging, and someone clearly growing for personal use. That's all. You want to grow 100 plants? Get a license and follow the safety regulations. This is what a legal market looks like.
 

stoned-trout

if it smells like fish
Veteran
just say no fools!!!!!!!!!!!!!...if you want to smoke get a cheap rec their only like 25 $....yeehaw....don't be fooled,,, what they offer is just bait ...fuck no
 

iBogart

Active member
Veteran
just say no fools!!!!!!!!!!!!!...if you want to smoke get a cheap rec their only like 25 $....yeehaw....don't be fooled,,, what they offer is just bait ...fuck no

Growing 6 plants for personal use is bait? Carrying an ounce in your pocket around town for personal use is bait? You want more?
 

yesum

Well-known member
ICMag Donor
Veteran
I am taking the bait what can I say. I would like a lot more freedom in growing but this works for me. I could live with this law easily.

I understand those who sell will get fucked but that is the way of government.
 

sdd420

Well-known member
Veteran
How can anyone not vote yes? I mean regardless of who you are or what you do for a living, it's about human rights not grower rights. We can start small and improve it next time. I'm tired of being a second class citizen because I use mj !! Who are you to deny me and everyone else this freedom? Greedy motherfuckers everyone of you who are against it. Money is the root of all evil and you all are turning to the dark side.
 
Jail time is bad, mkay? We get it. The limitations on personal plant counts and flower amounts is to formulate reasonable guidelines to distinguish between someone who is trying to circumvent the regulations, aka bootlegging, and someone clearly growing for personal use. That's all. You want to grow 100 plants? Get a license and follow the safety regulations. This is what a legal market looks like.

I would offer the example of Colorado. Possession of 12oz or more is a felony, punishable by 1-2 years in prison and/or $100,000 in fines. Certainly better than some states. However, a six plant grow could yield up to a pound quite regularly, and the personal or hobbyist grower is thus commiting a felony offense, in a "legal" state. It seems to me that the restrictive limitations do not reflect the reality of people's interaction with cannabis and its cultivation.

While I can concede that consumers are valid in their concern for responsibly grown and contaminate free product, not unlike fruits or vegetables, I feel that attitudes toward possession are antiquated and stuck in a drug war mindset. Not surprising given the legislators.
 
Obviously, legislation must be subject to critique, and fear of not getting it right shouldn't deter us from pursuing decriminalization and/or legalization.
 

mojave green

rockin in the free world
Veteran
Obviously, legislation must be subject to critique, and fear of not getting it right shouldn't deter us from pursuing decriminalization and/or legalization.
Concur.
The debate is important!
At the end of the day the voters will decide. Interesting group those voters are.
Oftentimes their vote doesn't reflect mine.
:biggrin:
 

iBogart

Active member
Veteran
I would offer the example of Colorado. Possession of 12oz or more is a felony, punishable by 1-2 years in prison and/or $100,000 in fines. Certainly better than some states. However, a six plant grow could yield up to a pound quite regularly, and the personal or hobbyist grower is thus commiting a felony offense, in a "legal" state. It seems to me that the restrictive limitations do not reflect the reality of people's interaction with cannabis and its cultivation.

While I can concede that consumers are valid in their concern for responsibly grown and contaminate free product, not unlike fruits or vegetables, I feel that attitudes toward possession are antiquated and stuck in a drug war mindset. Not surprising given the legislators.

The likelihood of an over limit felony arrest in a legal environment complete with storefront sales and large grow ops throughout the state shouldn't be a concern. I just don't see swat teams zeroing in on your six plant grow just to make sure you're not over your limits. It's a fear rooted in the paranoia of yesterday. If you;re growing just for personal use, then keep everything at personal levels. You should have nothing to worry about.
 

minds_I

Active member
Veteran
Hello all,

If the taxes will fix the pot holes (pardon the pun) in the roads and improve the schools and still lets me grow my own...I am down.

I feel for the small growers that see their livelihoods threatened...I do, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.


minds_I
 

stoned-trout

if it smells like fish
Veteran
just say no,, to giving them lots of your dough $$$$$$$$$$$$....fuck the bullshit legalization....yeehaw
 
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