legalization is crushing Vancouver's cannabis activism
Footage of cops shutting down cannabis activists, Saturday Feb 10th, 2018.
Project Apprentice has wasted resources, endangered patients, and turned up nothing but consenting adults peacefully transacting in cannabis. SHAME on these prohibitionists, who are on the wrong side of history.
Thank you for helping us end cannabis prohibition!
End prohibition against the herb and protect the patients!
One other thing buddy said before I got the camera rolling was "you got the legalization you wanted, now go home". Grrrrr.
Wow. What craziness in the world.
Maybe I am missing something but I guess I really didn’t see the antagonism by law enforcement as was suggested. I saw a bloke wanting to have a chat who was encouraged to move along. Maybe he enjoyed live music.
To my uneducated mind, the true barrier to mass adoption of cannabis is the inability to produce an accurate test for determining real-time intoxication levels. Once such a test is developed, then cannabis too can move forward with legislation and socitial adoption. Assume that these governments want nothing more than to be able to collect taxes from cannabis sales in the same manner they do for cigarettes and alcohol. Consider also that they like the separation from other drugs that complete legalization of cannabis would offer. Pot is called the gateway drug because often times the same guy who sells you your pot also sells harder drugs. He is obviously incentivized to offer all of his clients more addictive options to pot. By taking it out of the hands of the dealers by allowing its legal sale our governments strike a blow to the shadow industry that has been tasked with supplying our needs up to this point.
"Maybe he enjoyed live music."
You're giving him plausible deniability. But how does that explain him watching for half an hour beforehand, from the car? And then an hour afterward? There's no way he could hear the live music from there.
You know, I know, and he knows that he's there to harass us because we didn't show enough phony respect. He couldn't detain or charge us with anything, so he pulled the "I can stand right next to you and stare at you if I want to, it's a free world!" card. He acted less immature once the camera went on, and then even moreso once he had his OWN camera on (at the end), with all the "stay safe and have a wonderful day" crap. But before the cameras, he was acting like a 14 year old boy, with body armor, a metal club, a taser, pepper spray, and a loaded gun on his belt.
No, he wasn't doing it because he enjoyed live music, and people need to stop validating and enabling bully tactics by police.
"by allowing its legal sale our governments strike a blow to the shadow industry that has been tasked with supplying our needs up to this point."
What shadow industry? This shows you aren't aware of the facts here, no offense meant personally.
Cannabis isn't grown by a shadow industry whatsoever, it's grown by activists, family people, little old ladies, and mom-n-pops backyard operations. You're falling for the propaganda. Look into it, you'll soon discover the horrible reality of the situation.
"Pot is called the gateway drug because often times the same guy who sells you your pot also sells harder drugs."
Actually, no. Cannabis used to be called a gateway drug because people believed it acted as a "gateway" to using harder drugs. In reality, alcohol is the most harmful gateway drug commonly used. How many stories start with "I was really drunk one night and...."? Alcohol is a gateway toward opiate drugs and antianxiety meds like benzodiazepines because they share chemical similarities. THC and other cannabinoids can't be gateway drugs for many reasons, including that the receptors they interact with (CB1 and CB2) aren't receptive to "harder drugs". Stimulation of our endocannabinoid system leads to regulation of health, happiness, and homeostasis. It's quite the opposite with alcohol and with harder drugs.
Also, most hard drug pushers will look at you like you're from Mars if you ask for cannabis. Your worry that hard drugs will get pushed through weed dealers is mostly based in Reefer Madness.
"the inability to produce an accurate test for determining real-time intoxication levels"
Is that why legalization of prescription pills has been such a failure, because we don't have ways to determine real-time intoxication levels?
Oh, what? Prescription pills aren't a failure? In fact, they're everywhere in our society? In fact, they're overprescribed and people are becoming addicted to them, leading to the current opioid crisis in North America? Hmmmmm!
Truth is, there isn't a need to invent a device that can determine how intoxicated by cannabis a person is. Blood (or saliva or urine) levels don't tell you that information, they only tell you a number. Intoxication isn't a number, it's an outcome on our behaviour, reaction time, and skills. If a person can't drive properly on Effexor, or Ativan, or Percoset, they're intoxicated. Same with cannabis. Or alcohol. Or sleep deprivation. Or distraction.
Your desire to give the state powers to determine my "real-time cannabis intoxication level" is a bit creepy. No thanks.
How "legalization" was supposed to work, and this is what Trudeau said to get elected, is he writes an "order in council". It takes about 2 hours to write and sign. All peaceful cannabis "crimes" would cease to be crimes immediately. Peaceful prisoners all released, police budgets across the country halved overnight, addictions would drop, hard drug deaths would drop, people would stop losing their children because they grew plants, etc.
Instead, we're getting delayed year after year, so they can bring in an expensive new set of laws, with even harsher punishments than before, and a larger police force to deal with the new crimes, and more prisons to jail all the non-legalized cannabis sellers, and massive taxes to pay for all this.
Thanks for your question! I don't mean to be dramatic or rude, I'm just very opinionated about this topic. It's the center of my activism and what I've been studying (and living) for several years. : )
Except for the tax. Washington State had a 86% tax. Now I believe that it is a flat 25%. Most goes into a politician slushfund. A small amount really went to schools and roads. Less than 1%......