“Seems so long I felt this way and time sure passin slow
My time coming, anyday, don’t worry about me, no ” – John Perry Barlow
Mark Morford is a columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle. In his latest piece, he imagines a glorious “green in every way” future for the Golden State.
Pot is, by a huge margin, the single largest cash crop in the state unless you count porn stars and celebrity rehab. It rakes in upwards of $14 billion a year — maybe a lot more than that — and that’s just from five clever hippies and a couple intrepid grandmas in Ukiah. Imagine what we could do if we went all-in.
There won’t be much pushback from D.C. President Obama’s already stated that his upcoming appointee to head the DEA is going to knock it the hell off with the insidious raids of harmless medical pot shops in California, and wants to quit using federal resources to bash hippies and circumvent state laws.
Look. Is there really anyone left who doesn’t already know the “War on Drugs” is a pathetic joke, an abject failure and a taxpayer nightmare, and the only reason it survives at all is to fund the CIA and fellate the prison guard unions and support a shameful prison system, and to let politicians say they’re “tough on crime” so they can to deflect all those uninformed parents who relentlessly whine about pot in public schools just before dashing off a wine-tasting party to snort a nice line of Bolivian coke
Tough times demand innovation. We have to work our way through the maze, an act that can be maddening in its syrupy pace. But it’s more than that. We also need to get together and honestly face what’s troubling us as a nation.
The main thing is we need to stop lying, listening to lies, believing in lies and spreading lies. What lies? All lies. The lies that lead us to war, not just the war we’re in today, all wars. The lie that we can’t house, educate and care for all Americans. The lie that one religion is better than another. And on it goes. A difference of opinion is one thing, but there is truth in the world, truth that can’t be bent.
Morford is telling the truth about pot and its ability to heal the economy. Perhaps, serious people are ready to listen and become the change agents they read about in Fast Company and blogs like this.
From a marketing perspective, servicing the pot industry would be much like servicing the wine industry. A few big brands would emerge, but there would be thousands of micro-brands to create and support.
[MONDAY UPDATE] This morning, California State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco introduced #AB 390, a common sense bill that proposes to regualte and tax marijuana to the tune of $1.3 billion annually.
