Meade's grandfather (a farmer in Indiana) was part of the U.S. "Hemp for Victory" program during World War II. Watch this awesome government video:
Most of that extolls hemp, but there's a break in the tone at 2:43 for the warning: "This is hemp seed. Be careful how you use it, for to grow hemp legally, you must have a federal registration and tax stamp."
Freeze the frame at 2:52, and you'll see the word "marihuana" on the stamp, like this:
Meade says he wishes he had his grandfather's old stamp, and his dreams-from-my-grandfather ethos inspires me to believe that the best solution to the marijuana problem is to let individuals grow their own.
Here's this great New Yorker article "BUZZKILL/Washington State discovers that it’s not so easy to create a legal marijuana economy," detailing the problems of marijuana as a commercial product. My proposal is: Don't even try to make the illegal market legal. Destroy the market altogether. Abandon the fantasy of regulation and taxation and turn the much-desired product into a worthless commodity. Let weed be weed, with the true market value it would find if nature could take its course: $0.
IN THE COMMENTS: Meade writes a song (based on "Copper Kettle," which you can listen to by any number of artists; we like Bob Dylan; lyrics here):
Get you a lamp with ballast, get a 600 watt bulb
Fill in with rooted hemp clones; soon be outta your skull
You'll just lay there by the vaporizer while the moon is bright
Watch them buds a-fillin' out in the Colorado light.
Build you an "enclosed, locked space"
Build it in Littleton
Don't use no yard or windowsill,
Won't get the big photons
We'll just lay there by the vaporizer while the moon is bright
Watch them buds a-fillin' out in the Colorado light.
My daddy he grew hemp crops, my granddaddy he did too
We've paid all our hemp taxes since 1942
You'll just lay there by the vaporizer while the moon is bright
Watch them buds a-fillin' out in the Colorado light.
Posts
64 comments:
Note to the Republican Party. You can not pose as the Party of small government while jailing gardeners.
RE: "Abandon the fantasy of regulation and taxation..."
Could Also Apply to ObamaCare.
The Answers are #12 And #35.
Get you a lamp with ballast, get a 600 watt bulb
Fill in with rooted hemp clones; soon be outta your skull
You'll just lay there by the vaporizer while the moon is bright
Watch them buds a-fillin' out in the Colorado light.
Build you an "enclosed, locked space"
Build it in Littleton
Don't use no yard or windowsill,
Won't get the big photons
We'll just lay there by the vaporizer while the moon is bright
Watch them buds a-fillin' out in the Colorado light.
My daddy he grew hemp crops, my granddaddy he did too
We've paid all our hemp taxes since 1942
You'll just lay there by the vaporizer while the moon is bright
Watch them buds a-fillin' out in the Colorado light.
I'm going to ask you a straightforward question: isn't it true that you have, perhaps unwillingly, acquired a certain habit through association with certain undesirable people?
Next Thing You Know They'll be After my Meth They Will I Can Feel It They Are Already Watching Even With Foil on the Windows They are Watching They Have Goggles For That.
"I'm going to ask you a straightforward question: isn't it true that you have, perhaps unwillingly, acquired a certain habit through association with certain undesirable people?"
Habit? I take it you're referring (get it?) to my habit of
killing my entire family with an axe
Your reporter in Woodstock can attest that home grown is groovy!
Growing that shit, however, is an art form.
At the end of the day, we hippies here in Woodstock have got boots on the ground.
Well, maybe more like Birkenstocks!
Happy New Year!
Hooray for that Colorado Rocky Mountain High!
The true market value isn't quite zero. But it would be something in the ballpark of "trade you this giant bag for a cheesesteak".
"I'm going to ask you a straightforward question: isn't it true that you have, perhaps unwillingly, acquired a certain habit through association with certain undesirable people?"
That quote is from "Reefer Madness," and have you ever noticed who wrote the screenplay to "Reefer Madness"?
When I was first trying to figure out if I could risk meeting the man who is now my husband, back when I only knew him as a commenter on my blog, having googled the name Laurence Meade, I asked him (in email) if he could tell me what his real name is (and wondered if I shouldn't be suspicious of a man who, for a pseudonym, chose the author of "Reefer Madness").
(And back then, the IMDB page for the movie spelled the first name with the "u.")
"Let weed be weed, with the true market value it would find if nature could take its course: $0."
But, of course, the market value is not $0 and will never be so long as people want to get high from the stuff. All else flows from this fact, including laws against being high while performing certain jobs and prohibition against providing it to minors.
Besides, dreaming of a no-law regime for pot is pretty silly in a country where the nanny-staters can make it illegal to smoke a tobacco cigarette in an open air park.
If only those royalties from Reefer Madness came to me. Never more you'd toil.
@ Ann and Meade:
The Answers are Still #12 And #35.
"The true market value isn't quite zero. But it would be something in the ballpark of 'trade you this giant bag for a cheesesteak.'"
But any seller has overhead, so is the market not destroyed.
"Growing that shit, however, is an art form."
So is tending a chia pet. I think you could handle it.
"I think you could handle it."
I doubt it. :-)
@Meade,
An old sage (in fact my late wife) always gave me this advice...
Never fight over a woman. God gave her two ends for a purpose.
As we say here in Woodstock, Make Love, Not War!
There is still marijuana growing wild along the roadside ditches all through the Midwest from seeds from the government hemp-growing campaign in WWII.
But alas, it is not "Tijuana Gold" quality for hallucinatory purposes.
Well, they'll Tax you when you walk all alone
They'll Tax you when you are walking home
They'll Tax you and then say you are brave
They'll Tax you when you are set down in your grave
But I would not feel so all Relaxed
Everybody must get Taxed.
When Meade said "I want to move to Colorado to be a marijuana grower," I thought: Well, we traveled to Colorado to get married, because of the law.
A weed is just a good plant in the wrong place.
Walk down University Ave in a Certain Northwestern City. Pot is Legal (by the State, at Least). The Street Urchins and the Vagabonds, Smoking Green as They Pass. Smells Like a Rock Concert circa 1973.
Mr. Forward said...
"Note to the Republican Party. You can not pose as the Party of small government while jailing gardeners."
Just please don't make us Republicans pay for the social wreckage caused by a generation of pot smokers.
And let's please develop a good field-test for THC in the blood of anyone who commits an act of negligence that causes harm. Because I'll want to sue.
Oh, and lastly; I cannot think of anything that so effectively discriminates against the lower classes and the impoverished, than drug use.
Will marijuana Stores take EBT Cards? I am Sure They Must Also Sell Cheetos and Other Necessary Snack Items.
Kurtzbein??
Short leg??
My favorite line: "For the sailor, no less than the hangman, hemp was indispensable."
Awesome. Looks like Colorodo will be the destination of choice for all of America's unproductive elderly hippies and vacuous flower children of the 70's.
What's wrong with California?
Too many queers for ya?
Re: "my habit of
killing my entire family with an axe"
Q. Will Your Parents Let You Use a Chainsaw?
A. I Don't Know; I'll Axe Them.
Dear Ann,
Thanks for pointing out that post about self-solemnizing marriages in Colorado. I had missed that one.
I especially liked this part of your post:
"One thing I love about American federalism is that — subject to the limitations of national law — individual states can do things their own way, and we can move around finding the law we like."
Naturally, you must feel that "the limitations of national law" must apply to supply a U.S. Constitutional right to gay sodomy (Lawrence) and gay marriage (Windsor? the next one?).
It nicely crystallizes the essential question posed by Justice Scalia; where did THAT Constitutional right come from? What part of the Constitution do we find that in, and when did it start meaning that? Particularly since there were on-point cases (Bowers v. Hardwick) that said precisely the opposite.
Doesn't say much for stare decisis as an excuse for preserving Roe v. Wade, if precedent is so easily tossed.
Ebay tax stamp. Almost tempted to buy.
Opium, Coca Leaves, Marihuana. Etc. Special Federal Tax Stamp - 1942 - Montana
A little background on
FEDERAL MARIJUANA TAX STAMPS
The federal government had originally included marijuana among the substances to be regulated by the Harrison Act of 1914, but opposition from the drug industry is generally believed responsible for its exclusion from the act.
Oops. I apologize for addressing you as "Ann." I had forgotten that you prefer "Althouse" or your well-earned title as Professor. I am sorry and I'll try not to do it again. I meant no insult.
Recreational weed. What next?
But any seller has overhead, so is the market not destroyed.
Is it? Let's go pull our micro textbook off the shelf and turn to Chapter Two (How Markets Work)
MASS: Mothers Against Stoned Surfers.
The New Yorker article offers good insight.
It demonstrates the unimaginative nature of legislators and how Government is The Corporation.
Mimicking the alcohol model isn't going to work. It's highly flawed - as much as we have adapted to it - but separation of distribution and manufacturer, for example, coupled with Federal regulation hasn't prevented a corporate monopoly.
Perhaps modifications to the federal regulations that hold current federal laws hold, unless the the state has specific laws. This could be an avenue to reducing federal oversight back to regulation [as in 'to make regular'] interstate commerce - as was originally designed.
I'm no fan of making such drugs legal, but can see no argument for heavy handed enforcement; jaywalking isn't exactly the crime of the century.
There will be social repercussions which will go beyond a few stoners. While there are similarities between alcohol, tobacco and marijuana, (coffee, and other 'harmless' substances), they are very different drugs, with very different effects. This is ignoring the application of addiction to each. Should drug policies be changed for employees? While the 'imparment' and 'detection' substances are different - thus drawing a parallel with alcohol can be a misnomer - how do we establish impairment of judgement?
On which side should one err; is an employer within their right to terminate an employee while at the same time an employee use marijuana as a 'right'? Remember, requirements are cropping up which not smoking (period) is a condition of employment.
Agree with Althouse. Have always thought that legal herbal autarky should be the primary solution to undermining the black market while preserving natural barriers to entry.
According to John in this prior thread, we're already seeing the pernicious effects of "regulatory capture" in Washington state.
EDH said...
John said...
In Seattle last August I listened to a radio interview of some of the so-called pot-legalization leaders pleading for the long arm of the state to crack some heads and bust those criminals who grow and harvest their own weed; thereby threatening their profitable state-created monopolistic enterprise, backed by public-funded goon squads (state police).
[It's not about pot legalization, and never has been.]
But I suppose states never ever had to rely on Wickard v. Filburn [to justify their market intrusions].
I've always thought herbal autarky should be at the forefront of any liberalization of marijuana laws.
12/14/13, 9:52 AM
The Ghost of the Gatsby Project says:
"I’ll be the man smoking two marijuana cigarettes.”
The Ghost of the Gatsby Project says:
The Great Gatsby Was A Marijuana Dealer: The Evidence
http://blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2013/05/20/the-great-gatsby-was-a-marijuana-dealer-the-evidence/
The Ghost of the Gatsby Project is Everywhere.
"Just please don't make us Republicans pay for the social wreckage caused by a generation of pot smokers."
Chuck
So how much money has the drug war saved you so far?
Third try's a charm:
The market value of wild-grown marijuana, even if unregulated and untaxed, would be vastly lower than the market value of carefully-tended marijuana, in large part because the seedless THC-rich buds only come about if the plants are methodically tended and prevented from their natural pollination/self-propagation routines. As with many other agricultural products, in other words, cultivation adds value.
The Ghost of the Gatsby Project says:
As my train emerged from the tunnel into sunlight, only the hot whistles of the National Marijuana Company broke the simmering hush at noon."
Marijuana is incredibly easy to grow if you are able to do so outside.
Unfortunately, the risk of having the feds (or local cops) confiscate your *house* makes people leery of doing that sort of thing.
One wonders how long the feds will allow this experiment in nullification to proceed? It sets a dangerous precedent, after all: If you allow the people to make their own choice about whether or not to use a substance, what other choices might they demand as well? The DEA and allied agencies, as well as the prison-industrial complex, have a prosperous sinecure set up for themselves, what with fines, forfeitures and incarceration of drug offenders. If the American people ever figure out that it's counterproductive and a drag on the economy, who knows what might happen?
Oh great, for years we've heard the libertarian mantra, legalize it and tax it! and now we see it was a plot all along by the state to take our weed and regulate it!
Video with some hemp history showing 1914 $10 bill made of hemp with the back showing hemp (?, how do they know it isn’t wheat) farming
"The market value of wild-grown marijuana, even if unregulated and untaxed, would be vastly lower than the market value of carefully-tended marijuana, in large part because the seedless THC-rich buds only come about if the plants are methodically tended and prevented from their natural pollination/self-propagation routines. As with many other agricultural products, in other words, cultivation adds value."
My proposal isn't to allow outdoor "wild" growth, only small, noncommercial amounts that you would have to grow indoors (as Colorado now permits). I don't think this kind of growing is very difficult, but it does put some barrier up for some people. In my system, these people would have to do without, have friends who share theirs, or participate in the illegal market. So I do think there would still be an illegal market for people who prefer doing something illegal to growing an indoor plant. I think the biggest problem isn't that it's difficult to do this growing but that you'd need some room indoors to do it, people with children would have special problems putting it somewhere isolated and locked, and it takes some advance planning, including buying a few things (like the right kind of lamp). So I think the idea of getting the market value down to zero is a bit delusional, but I offer this idea as an alternative to making marijuana a legally marketed commodity, which has some serious problems described in The New Yorker article (e.g., the product will be promoted (encouraging use)).
"Naturally, you must feel that "the limitations of national law" must apply to supply a U.S. Constitutional right to gay sodomy (Lawrence) and gay marriage (Windsor? the next one?)."
Lawrence found a right to sodomy for gay people and straight people too, Chuck. To put it bluntly, that means blow jobs. What do you think of the govt's claim of power to put a wife in prison for giving her husband a blow job? Start with that question rather than the man-on-man anal sex that you don't want anyway.
Hpw about Poppy seeds--the kind one gets on one's breakfast roles? Just how DO they legally get on there as, iirc, it is a federal crime to own, grow or distribute poppy plants or their constituent parts, n''cest-ce pas?
** "...breakfast 'rolls'..."
My wife's grandparents grew MJ in Northern Kenosha County during World War-3 for rope fiber. It appears that there is still some wild hemp growing here-and-there in that area. It THC level is so low as to require smoking a peck to get even a little buzz.
The real future of hemp production is for its fibers and other, non-intoxicating, products.
So I think the idea of getting the market value down to zero is a bit delusional, but I offer this idea as an alternative to making marijuana a legally marketed commodity, which has some serious problems described in The New Yorker article (e.g., the product will be promoted (encouraging use)).
The idea of zero value pot is delusional because it isn't what people want. Look at the alcohol market. The very small active molecule is present in wine, spirits and beer. Mixed around ethanol are other formulations which people prefer. Hell, some people will pay dearly for versions of ethanol which others can't possible afford. Exclusivity, cachet and even packaging play a role. It's also like tobacco.
I'm going to Montana soon, going to be a dental floss tycoon.
That's how silly this all seems.
sticdr wrote: "how do we establish impairment of judgement?"
Haphazardly and and badly, but it will improve. This is a secondary issue, of less important to pot advocates because they tend to minimize the potential harm. I suspect this is because most haven't been in a position where they were responsible for people's lives. And they never expect to be. That's why they're called stoners.
Thing is aside from the super high THC clone crop, regular hemp can be a valuable crop again to raise in the USA for fiber, hemp oil, and various other products that coincidentally cuts the need for similar petroleum based products.
Like soybeans, parts of the USA are ideal for hemp cultivation.
So "Drill, baby drill!"
And "Grow, baby, grow!"
Will Cate said...
My favorite line: 'For the sailor, no less than the hangman, hemp was indispensable.'
Not to mention the artist's canvas.
Aside from the large contingent of people trying to be one of the first to buy legal pot today, I don't anticipate much will change in the black market economy as a result of legalization.
If you're going to tax the crap out of something, then people will continue to buy it from their sources that they already have and are cheaper. Stupid Colorado. Of course those who grow their own small supplies will find that easier to accomplish. My neighbor took a picture of a house he saw near our home that backs into open space. There were at least 7 plants out on the patio. So the law change was good for him.
sticdr wrote: "how do we establish impairment of judgement?"
That topic is discussed in The New Yorker article I keep linking to:
"… But scientists know little about how the key components of marijuana—tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD)—affect different users. So Holcomb opted for a blunt test: if you are stopped while driving erratically, and your blood contains five nanograms of active THC, you will be issued a D.U.I. citation. The number is arbitrary: because marijuana affects users differently, the presence of a certain level of THC in the blood does not correlate predictably with a level of impairment. And if you are only an occasional user your THC level tends to drop rapidly about an hour after ingestion, whereas if you are a regular user the chemical can linger in your system for days. Because many medical users consume cannabis daily, the Washington test could have the practical effect of barring sick patients from the road, even though their heightened tolerance may leave them unimpaired.
"No one is happy with the solution. The Marijuana Policy Project, a national organization urging reform of cannabis laws, argues that the THC test “criminalizes sober drivers.” Studies co-authored by researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, meanwhile, suggest that a five-nanogram baseline may be too permissive—that impairment is possible with lower levels of THC. Kleiman points out that a blood test for THC cannot tell authorities whether the driver took a puff five minutes or five days ago. “You’d need some fairly fancy chemistry with metabolites to determine when the subject used,” he told me. “A mouth swab might work, but that remains to be developed.” (Some of the tax revenue from legalization will fund research on marijuana intoxication.)…"
More at the link.
But any seller has overhead, so is the market not destroyed.
Abundance makes a thing cheap.
"Because many medical users consume cannabis daily, the Washington test could have the practical effect of barring sick patients from the road, even though their heightened tolerance may leave them unimpaired."
Well, if they're "unimpaired", they won't be driving erratically and getting pulled over, right?
"Lawrence found a right to sodomy for gay people and straight people too, Chuck. To put it bluntly, that means blow jobs. What do you think of the govt's claim of power to put a wife in prison for giving her husband a blow job? Start with that question rather than the man-on-man anal sex that you don't want anyway."
********
Dear Professor Althouse,
When you say that the Supreme Court in Lawrence set forth a general Constitutional right to engage in sodomy (hetero- or homosexual), I don't think that is correct. I know that Justice Kennedy's opinion (joined in only in part by Justice O'Connor) tried to take that route. But the applicable state law in Lawrence was Tex. Penal Code Ann. §21.06(a) (2003). It provided: “A person commits an offense if he engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.” And then it went on to describe "deviate sexual intercourse" in ways that we'd commonly understand as sodomy.
Anything in the Kennedy majority opinion that tries to speak to heterosexual sodomy is, I think, fairly regarded as dicta. There was never any need to find a constitutional right to heterosexual sodomy. It was not prohibited in Texas.
Whether or not any of us find such laws to be "uncommonly silly" (as Justices Scalia and Thomas thought) is not the point. The point is whether, and how, such laws are Constitutionally prohibited. I think it is much better Constitutional hygiene for such laws to be developed and if need be, erased, by state legislative activity*, than by "Constitutional" fiat handed down by Article III judges.
*Alternatively, via specific Constitutional amendment.
"Anything in the Kennedy majority opinion that tries to speak to heterosexual sodomy is, I think, fairly regarded as dicta. There was never any need to find a constitutional right to heterosexual sodomy. It was not prohibited in Texas."
It is the plurality that says there is a substantive due process right and overrules Bowers. In Bowers, the statute that was upheld did not discriminate based on the sex of the partners (as was the case with the Texas statute in Lawrence). It's not a matter of "dicta" but the precedential effect of a plurality opinion.
O'Connor, having joined Bowers, declined to join in overruling it. In taking that position, she laid the groundwork for equal protection cases like Windsor.
But if you don't accept the notion that there is a substantive due process right for consenting adults to engage in sodomy, then you have to say that the government could ban blow jobs, as long as it banned them for gay and straight people alike.
Obviously, there's a political safeguard against that. It's only the discrimination against gay people that was politically palatable in recent years. Any old anti-sodomy laws that applied to heterosexuals were not enforced.
So if you say what you need is generally applicable laws and then there's no right's violation, you can stop there. That's what Scalia would say: "Our salvation is the Equal Protection Clause, which requires the democratic majority to accept for themselves and their loved ones what they impose on you and me."
My answer to Chuck is the same though: Your blow jobs are at stake.
Yes, Professor I like your answer. Your nuance in regard to the O'Connor concurrence and the "plurality" represented by the Kennedy lead opinion is not wasted on me. Your basic reasoning is of course correct.
But in the end your provocative questions to me leave me unmoved. I see no reason why the Constitution should forbid state laws banning sodomy of all kinds if state voters want to do that. So yes, I fully and clearly and absolutely accept that "[my] blowjobs are at stake."
That's not a problem for Scalia, or me. Scalia gets pressed like this all the time; on whether he thought Griswold v. Connecticut was erroneously decided and Scalia says yes that he thinks it was. (Scalia's adoption of the phrase "uncommonly silly law" comes from Potter Stewart's dissent in Griswold.)
I actually think Griswold is easier to reconcile than Scalia does. I might have joined the Griswold majority. Nobody thought of contraceptive medications in 1789. But they did think about homosexuality -- "buggery" -- and most jurisdictions had a legal prohibition against it. It was clearly understood to be within the realm of Constitutionally-allowable lawmaking.
The fact that in the past, anti-sodomy laws may have been used in a discriminatory fashion against gays but basically never against heterosexuals doesn't give me the slightest pause, unless one wishes to (as I don't) create a kind of vague suspect classification for gays. The kind that Kennedy teased us with in Lawrence. That Kennedy creation was the first thing that Scalia attacked in his Lawrence dissent. The fact that local law enforcers might rarely (and let's face it, the sodomy prosecutions of gays were only slightly less freakishly rare than any homosexual prosecutions in the era of Bowers v Hardwick) choose to prosecute gays doesn't bother me much more than cops choosing who to stop for traffic offenses. It there is discrimination, we have a rubric for those cases and it doesn't include LGBT characteristics. Pass an amendment if you want that sort of protection.
And let's not forget to bring this discussion of gay marriage back to the original question. Althouse & Meade might like the federalism aspect of Colorado's making its own laws about marijuana.
But they are less sanguine about federalism when Utah is making its own laws about marriage.
Here's this great New Yorker article "BUZZKILL/Washington State discovers that it’s not so easy to create a legal marijuana economy," detailing the problems of marijuana as a commercial product. My proposal is: Don't even try to make the illegal market legal. Destroy the market altogether. Abandon the fantasy of regulation and taxation and turn the much-desired product into a worthless commodity. Let weed be weed, with the true market value it would find if nature could take its course: $0.
Nonsense.
Two problems: First, people desire it, and desire it as a finished, usable product.
Unless you can make that magically appear in their hands in infinite quantity, it is therefore an economic good and thus has value.
It won't reduce to zero "because it's a plant" - go to a grocery store sometime and you'll see a variety of plants, some of which are trivially grown at home, for sale, for actual money.
Second, Washington's problem is not that it's Just So Hard to let something be sold even with taxes and some regulation, but that Washington's law on selling marijuana is ridiculous.
Washington is having a difficult time - to the extent it is - because the law, and the regulations they got to come up with to go with it, are ungainly.
(One might argue that the regulations are even deliberately making it difficult, perhaps.)
The way to "Let weed be weed" and reduce its market value is to decriminalize its cultivation. Sow C. sativa and C. indica wherever they will readily naturalize. Soon the market value of Cannabis will approach the market value of Taraxacum.
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