Disqus - Latest Comments for wm97

Re: 'Climate-Anxious' College Students Troubled By Pesticides Need A Science Lesson

wm97 — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 13:31:34 -0000

Here is anxiety about climate change. If someone dropped a match in the wrong place in Yosemite, thousands of people would die in one afternoon.
That's anxiety about climate change.

Re: 'Climate-Anxious' College Students Troubled By Pesticides Need A Science Lesson

wm97 — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 13:06:09 -0000

The current drought is killing trees that have survived everything since thousands of years before Jesus.
That's proof of climate change, right there.

Re: 'Climate-Anxious' College Students Troubled By Pesticides Need A Science Lesson

wm97 — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 13:04:42 -0000

Tell you what. Take any of those nice city folk who are worried about climate change, or not, up to my area and I will give them a quick tour of the Sierra forests.
Ninety percent of the pine trees died from the effects of drought a few years ago. Have you ever seen someone touch a match to a dry Christmas tree? It explodes in flames.
Imagine one 150 feet high. Then imagine 150 million of them covering every mountain for more than 100 miles.

Have you heard about the Oak Fire? How about the Creek Fire? How about any of the other huge fires?
That's why - millions of trees dead from drought. It is killing trees that have survived everything since thousands of years before Jesus.

Those forests are the water supply for most of California, and for the farms that produce a huge chunk of the US and world food supply. So, if you come to see the forests or not, you will see the effects in the produce section of your local grocery store.

If you saw the forests out your front door every day, as I do, it would scare the Hell out of you. That anxiety you are talking about is nothing.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 11:03:44 -0000

Your first paragraph says that the rules were far looser under "medical".

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 11:02:28 -0000

99 plants allowed under System A.
No license required to sell under System A.

6 plants allowed under System B.
License required to sell under System B.

Which one has looser rules?

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 10:59:48 -0000

Well, I am interested enough in American jurisprudence that I was the first person to publish the complete legal documentation for the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club and Angel Raich's case. That was several thousand pages of discussion of all the legal issues behind medical weed.
How about you?

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 10:57:43 -0000

"The law."

The law says that the individual defines it themselves.

"I made no point that has anything to do with any suppositions."

You assumed a difference between medical and recreational.

"I don't drop names."

Because you never heard of the people who wrote the law.

"It would be impossible for me to think any hard about any of this than I have done over the past 50 years. I'm not accountable to your assumptions."

If your answer to a simple question is as simple as that, then you need to think harder.

"Dennis Peron is entitled to his opinion. That you like his opinion doesn't give his opinion any more or less weight with me."

Maybe you missed the fact that he wrote the law. Furthermore, the courts have sided with his view on who makes the decision. Therefore, his intent is more relevant than yours.

"Why do you want to fight so hard over something so meaningless and trivial? The law says they're different. That's good enough for me. If you believe otherwise, that's fine with me too."

Because, for the last thirty years, I have thought it was important for activists to think about the issues clearly so they don't make counterproductive mistakes like thinking that the legislature is a valid place to define medical uses of marijuana.

You can see part of my educational effort on "Hooked: Illegal Drugs and How They Got That Way". Look for an exceedingly handsome gentleman with a beard in a blue suit with a red tie.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 10:51:21 -0000

I can see what happens in actual real life. As far as jurisprudence goes, the US Atty for Nor Cal admitted that trying to enforce the marijuana laws in California was "shoveling sand against the tide". That was twenty years ago. There are still almost a thousand unlicensed marijuana stores in LA, the last I heard.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 10:49:37 -0000

"Easy peasy. The one with the medical card/letter of authorization/etc.

Too easy."

So, anyone with fifty bucks who wants weed. Anyone who wants it bad enough to pay a little extra for the first bag. The difference between "medical" and "recreational" is being willing to pay fifty bucks once a year.

That law says "debilitating or terminal medical condition." It requires either severe disability or imminent death. Obviously, the medical use of marijuana is far broader than that. So, that idea is wrong from the get-go. Marijuana has lots of uses for people who aren't in wheelchairs or about to die.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 10:43:31 -0000

"We do need the feds to move MJ to a lower classification."

Better yet, rethink the whole idea of the classification. Heroin, a direct equivalent to morphine, is in Schedule I. Alcohol and tobacco aren't listed at all. The problem is bigger than weed.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 10:41:50 -0000

"Yes, that was medical marijuana. Not recreational marijuana."

Describe the objective standards you would use to tell the difference.

"The difference in our views is that you are looking at the net effect of how it operated."

Well, if the "medical" rules are far looser than the "recreational" rules, and it only takes fifty bucks to be "medical", what do you suppose might happen?

" As an activist, my focus is on the law. "

Yeah, me too. Did you happen to know Dennis Peron who was the primary author, or Bill Panzer, Dale Gieringer, Robert Raich, etc., etc., who actually put the initiative together, got it passed and then fought the legal battles thereafter? Were you on the daily talk lists from about 1992 on?

"Our different foci result in our differing interpretations of the same thing."

I suggest you think a little harder about the real difference between "medical" and "recreational", especially in terms of how the authors of the law defined it and the particular wording they chose.

The primary author of the initiative - Dennis Peron - was quoted as saying that "All marijuana use is medical use." The wording of the initiative says that the decision whether it is "medical" is purely up to the doctor and the patient. I have never seen or heard of anyone who failed to get a medical marijuana recommendation when they requested one.

It is actually more legal under Prop. 215 than it is now. Under 215, lots of people were growing up to 99 plants. The current law limits them to six.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 10:32:46 -0000

"I know more about all of that than you can possibly imagine."

Uh-huh. Name some of the leading activists you have worked with on it for the last thirty years.

"Still, under the law, in reality, and in every way imaginable, medical legalization in California was not recreational legalization in California."

I have met only one person in my life who was ever able to define the difference between "medical" use and "recreational" use.

Let's try you. Suppose we have two stoners sitting on the couch hitting a bong. They both claim that they are "medical." You know that one of them is really "recreational."

Give me the objective standards that you would use to tell the difference between them. How would you know that one was "medical" and the other was "recreational?"

If you know more than I can imagine, that question should be easy.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 10:26:29 -0000

Yes, far more loose than recreational legalization.
Recreational legalization actually imposed more rules, not fewer.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 10:25:46 -0000

A funny story. I knew a guy who ran an unlicensed medical marijuana dispensary in Long Beach. Note that this store had no licenses or permits, paid no taxes, and had no rules governing it except for what the manager wanted to do. The manager's only requirement was that anyone who came into the store had to have the fifty dollar paper from the doctor.

They had a little remote control button hanging on the wall, with no indication what it was. So, a new person pressed the button. Within five minutes, the place was full of the local police SWAT team. It was a robbery alarm.

The cops looked around the place. There were at least sixty varieties of weed on sale, total of twenty pounds in plain sight and another fifty pounds or so in the back room, as well as a good stack of cash.

The cops looked around, sniffed some of the weed, and then left when they realized it was a false alarm. That was "medical" marijuana.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 10:17:56 -0000

Well, the way the law was worded, the distinction didn't make any real difference. Anyone who was "recreational" and wanted to be "medical" could do it in fifteen minutes for fifty bucks. At that point, they could do more with it than they could under the "recreational legalization" laws.

I know one guy who was pulled over driving a U-Haul literally full of weed. He showed the cop a stack of copies of pieces of paper from the doctor and the cop sent him on his way, no further questions. No licenses, no taxes, no nothing.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 05:09:12 -0000

In the case of California, "decriminalization" meant that after someone had paid fifty dollars to a doctor for a piece of paper, there were few rules on what they could do.

I knew one guy who got pulled over on Highway 5 driving a U-Haul full of weed. He was taking it from Humboldt down to some of the thousand or so unlicensed dispensaries in LA. He showed the cop a stack of copies of medical marijuana recommendations and the cop sent him on his way.

In another case, they found a 55-acre marijuana farm right down by Highway 99.

None of the laws since then have been that loose.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 04:49:23 -0000

This was never really a religious issue. Race, stupidity, and deliberate ignorance, but not so much religion.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 04:48:46 -0000

A guy I knew owned some less-than-completely-licensed dispensaries. When he came into the one I saw at the end of the day, the first thing he did was pull about four thousand off the top and put that in his "rainy day fund". Then he would pay all the bills and what was left over after that was profit. So, at least four grand a day in loose cash.

He owned five stores. Do the math on that for a year.
He said that his biggest worry was not the local cops or the Feds, because they generally left him alone.
He said his biggest worry was that his girlfriend would figure out that living alone with several suitcases full of cash would be more fun than living with him.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 04:40:55 -0000

Let me give it to you as a LA County Sheriff's Deputy explained while testifying under oath many years back.
He said that, if they saw any car they liked, they would pull it over, throw a joint in the back seat and seize the car.
The car is alleged to be guilty of a crime and has no presumption of innocence. Then, it is up to the car owner to spend months of effort and thousands of dollars on lawyers to prove that the car had never been involved in any crime, of any sort, at any time.

You would have to prove that the officer put the joint in there and that there had never been a joint in there at any other time in the car's history.

Just about nobody ever got their property back. The LA Times used to have weekly full-page ads in the classified section listing -- in small type -- all the cars that had been seized for drugs and were up for auction.

If they want your stuff, there is nothing you can do to stop them, and probably nothing you can to do get it back. That will be the fact 98 percent of the time.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 04:16:50 -0000

"Despite seizure laws, police must have probable cause to search inside a vehicle and probable cause that there is contraband inside the safe in order to seize it. Then, they would need to get a court order to open it."

No. What would happen is that they would open it -- because a safe inside a car is suspicious all by itself, and may be a specific felony itself depending on how it is installed -- and then they would take the cash. Then, your arguments about unlawful seizure wouldn't apply because the money is presumed to be guilty, not you.

That is, the money is alleged to have been involved in crime, not you. You have those nice constitutional protections that allow you to claim unlawful seizure. The money is a physical object so it does not have any such protections. If the money is accused of a crime, then it is up to you to prove that the money is completely innocent. Your guilt or innocence is not an issue, at all.

For good measure, because you did the suspicious thing of installing a safe, they would take your car, too.

Therefore, you would go through the same thing a guy I know went through. He had a legal bag of weed and a doctor's recommendation, and a few thousand in cash. Completely legal where he was at the time.

They took his car and the cash over "suspicion." They told him where to apply to get it back. Then began months of lost paperwork, people changing their jobs, and all sorts of other lame excuses. Then it becomes a game of how long it takes you to figure out that there is always one more administrative trick they can pull to drag you along.

That's what will happen.

The ONLY way you can stay safe is to simply not carry any cash more than you can feel comfortable throwing in the trash. Also, don't allow any of your friends to carry cash in your car, because the cops might seize your car, too, if you do -- regardless of whether you knew the friend had cash.

That has actually happened, too. But, it wasn't a car that was seized on that pretext -- it was a multi-million-dollar Lear Jet. A guy with a plane gave a ride to a guy carrying a briefcase -- then lost his jet.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 04:04:21 -0000

The California medical marijuana law, while labeled as "medical" was actually looser than any of the legalization measures that came after it.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 04:02:34 -0000

Whichever way you try to go, Federal law prevents it from interacting with any other financial institutions. That's for starters.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 04:01:15 -0000

See Raich v. Gonzales. According to the USSC, EVERYTHING is a Federal issue.
You can't grow tomatoes in your own backyard without Fed regulation.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 03:59:51 -0000

The unstated secret is that the California medical marijuana law was looser than any recreational law that came after it. So it was actually more legal before it was legalized.

Re: Armored car company settles suit over $1M pot sale seizures

wm97 — Sun, 08 May 2022 03:57:34 -0000

"What I'm surprised about is the libs are OK with the procedure."

I am surprised at statements that are that delusional. I happen to know the major activists over the last thirty years. Trust me, your statement is delusional.