[ad_1]
Anti-mask remedy?
Last week I told you about a group called “The Mendocino Patriots” that don’t have any masks, face protests in Ukiah stores that require customers to wear C-19 masks.
These “patriots” are opposed to state and county health ordinances requiring “universal masking” in “all indoor public places.”
A reader sent me an email suggesting that all anti-maskers and anti-vaxers should “be banned from receiving hospital treatment if they contract Covid as they are most likely responsible for the spread of the pandemic to others who follow the rules “.
What do you think, is it called poetic justice?
Or is this a desperate time calling for desperate action?
Seriously, most anti-vaccines that end up in hospital with C-19 or some variant quickly convert to true believer status and urge others not to follow their regrettable example and go get the Jab.
Watch out for weed wishes
Wait a second while I tune the smallest violin in the world so that I can play the smallest but saddest tune in the world.
This sonata is dedicated to all giant pot producers and companies who have released public relations statements, letters to the editor, opinion pieces and media platform propaganda regarding their impending demise due to alleged draconian regulatory violations. scope of national and local weed ordinances.
The Mr. and Mrs. Bigs of the pot industry are now demanding that state and local ganja officials send in the cavalry to rescue them because, as Flo Kana executives recently announced, “we don’t let’s take more. “
What Flo Kana is not going to put up with anymore is paying her taxes under state and local pot ordinances.
They say they are going bankrupt, downsizing and digging in, all because of the monopoly economic influences of the illegal and evil black market that deals exclusively with tax-free weed.
Ipso-facto, the Bigs must be relieved of their overloaded tax burden.
As Sonoma County-based CannaCraft, one of North Bay’s largest cannabis companies, put it in an opinion piece last week: “It stinks to be in the cannabis industry in Canada. California right now. We’re not just talking metaphorically either. Four years after cannabis advocates and workers celebrated the opening of the world’s largest legal recreational marijuana market, flawed licensing and taxation policies have created an emporium of dysfunction. Today, hundreds of California cannabis growers are choosing to let crops rot in the fields rather than risk a losing crop or return to the illicit market.
OK, I’ll make it short.
Here is what you need to know.
All of the following is what I have written and talked about over the past five years, when state and local governments began regulating cannabis.
State and local governments have been motivated to enact pot ordinances because of the allure of easy money – that is, greed – in the form of taxes and fees.
Producers were motivated by the lure of easy money, i.e. greed, in the form of cash income.
As I have said for many years to anyone calling for the legalization of marijuana, be careful what you wish for. Because with legalization comes regulation, and with regulation comes taxes, code enforcement, licensing, inspections, and increased oversight by regulatory and enforcement bodies.
And now they are finding that money is not that easy to make, and it also has all kinds of consequences, including those that are unintentional. For example, the County Cannabis Ordinance experience has attracted and continues to attract unwanted foreigners, rogue growers, cartels, deadly violence and environmental degradation so persists that the North Coast Water Board issued an emergency advisory saying our area is “inundated” with marijuana and the watersheds and water sources are seriously degraded.
These are the foundations of any regulatory system and framework: There is a coherent system of regulations and the means to enforce them. They fit like a hand and a glove. You cannot have one without the other. Yet this is the very situation this county has found itself in since the Cannabis Ordinance was enacted nearly five years ago. The hand and the glove never fit.
From an economic point of view, without law enforcement, overproduction of product occurs, which prevents people and businesses from moving the product to the so-called legal market. This scenario leaves only one viable alternative. If you want to pay your bills and somehow survive, you enter the black market.
Assuming this county one day gets serious about law enforcement, I estimated it would take five years to clean up all the illegal crops.
As you will find out in a second, it looks like my cleaning estimate could be way off the mark,
Militating against this, the county simply does not have the appropriate resources, funding, or the political will “can do” to administer and enforce any cannabis ordinance.
There is also another stupendous tip regarding the likelihood of making a workable and achievable weed ordinance.
Just recently, Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall told the Louisville Courier Journal that there were as many as 10,000 illegal crops in his county. He said he’s trying to target the Worst 100, which is all his little force can handle in a year.
“I’m fighting a dragon with a needle,†Kendall said.
Based on Kendall’s estimate that targeting 100 is increasing per year on a total of 10,000 illegal sites, it will only take 100 years to get the job done.
Now, that sounds like a workable plan.
Remember, when it comes to legalizing weeds, be careful what you want.
Jim Shields is editor and publisher of the Mendocino County Observer, [email protected], longtime District Director of the Laytonville County Watershed District, and chair of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio show “This and That” every Saturday at noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also broadcast live: http://www.kpfn.org.
[ad_2]
Comments are closed.