PART II – STATE OVER-REACH LEAVES TOURISM AND SOCIAL #CANNASAPIENS ORPHANED
State Over-reach Leaves Tourism and Social #CannaSapiens Orphaned
Part II
In a previous post, we outlined the changes that have brought the lounges around the state of Oregon under scrutiny. HB2564 has been amended specifically to limit the activities of people in indoor public spaces under the guise of air quality standards regulations. The language included such detail to state that a 500 dollar per day fine could be levied to any lounge that continues to operate after Jan 1st when the new amended bill's effectiveness launches.
No hint by Salem was given whether a new separate bill would be offered to give licensing and regulations on cannabis-centric-lounges and no one is expecting anything considering how obtuse and out-of-touch the clamp down on adult activity the Clean Air Act asserts. No rational person is going to equate cannabis smoke to tobacco when it comes to assessing the acute and general dangers to our bodies. It is obvious that tobacco is in a league of it's own when it comes to carcinogenic danger, general irritation, and the long term damages the physical smoke has on indoor surfaces.
The amendment over-reaches and doesn't offer consenting adults an opportunity to commune together and enjoy cannabis in a social setting. This is a very big problem given the construct that cannabis implies community and the community can never be separate from the cannabis. The tide of this plant is unimaginable and the popular trend is that we will have more people enjoying cannabis per capita than alcohol within a few years and the ubiquitous-ness that cannabis will enjoy within a short period of time will be astounding.
This trend in normalization spells a very dubious future for dispensaries, lounges, and head shops. All three of these business-models are limited-scope and will be made obsolete by hybrid-businesses. They will not be altogether erased off the map, but the ridiculous notion that you should go to a special place to procure cannabis is absurd. It will soon be available in grocery stores and on convenience marts. The combination of capitalism and normalization will bring cannabis in to a centralized position where Americans deem it to be a fruit or vitamin more-so than anything else….and when needed, it can be an effective medicine as well.
The ideology that cannabis should be taxed is wrapped up in to prohibitionist thinking which is the same place this obtuse "Clean Air Act" writing comes from. People with small minds sitting in chairs wearing ties who have no where-with-all to make the differentiation between cannabis and tobacco and their respective places in our society making regulations under the guise of "safety". No one in Salem thought of the license money and tax money that could be harnessed if hybrid "dispensary/slash/lounge" businesses where allowed to exist? No one in Salem thought of the idea that thousands of businesses already have outside lounges, and indoor circulatory apparatus is used every single day by cannabis cultivators?
Salem is both a vacuum and a statist machine. The reach of the government has widened and lengthened with the quasi-legalization of cannabis in Oregon. Proposition 91 had a lot of bad ideas in it, and one of the worst was giving the Oregon Health Authority as well as the Oregon Liquor Control open range to institute all flavors of over-reaching regulations. The Salem committee and the lobbyist-crews seem to have been prepped early to navigate the gapping holes in Prop 91 so that as much obtuse regulation could be "piled on" that would have NEVER BEEN VOTED ON by the constituency had it been brought to vote as it has been instituted to law.
Ginny Burdick and her crew of cannabis neophytes and prohibitionists have made our state look completely out of touch with it's voters. The eastern part of the state has effectively made cannabis mercantilism illegal and the whole confusing scheme of "dry counties" comes alive again. The rural areas of Oregon have been decimated by meth-abuse and lack of economy and the small-minds in Salem can't seem to make the connection that cannabis economies absorb illicit drug economies. This has been written about for decades in Reggae music. "Babylon does not like Rasta-man because he brings the plant economy to the island"
Part I
Part II
