Homeless in Arizona

Say you want to legalize marijuana.

And you also want to give yourself and your buddies a government monopoly on growing and selling marijuana so you can become rich selling people over priced medical or recreational marijuana at $300+ an ounce.

What would you do?

First you would limit the number of people that can grow and sell marijuana in your law. That will mean you can sell marijuana at outrageous prices because there won’t be that much competition.

When Andrew Myers wrote Prop 203 I believe he did that with the section that limits the number of medical marijuana dispensaries to one tenth of the number of pharmacy permits.

I think that rule currently only allows something like 127 medical marijuana dispensaries in Arizona.

That’s means there is only one medical marijuana dispensary for every 52,000 or so people in Arizona, based on Arizona’s currently population of 6.6 million people and the current 127 medical marijuana dispensaries.

If you ask me that was a very smart move on the part of Andrew Myers.

Second you would write the law to allow the police to put anybody in jail who competes with your government monopoly on growing and selling marijuana. That way you wouldn’t have to worry about paying to snuff out businesses or people who want to cut into your lucrative government monopoly on growing and selling marijuana.

When Andrew Myers wrote Prop 203 he did that with two things.

First Andrew Myers set a limit of 2.5 ounces of marijuana per person in Prop 203.

I suspect that Andrew Myers assumed that anybody with more than 2.5 ounces of marijuana might be a marijuana dealer who was cutting into the profits of the medical marijuana dispensaries.

So by making possessing more the 2.5 ounces of marijuana illegal, Andrew Myers is allowing the police to arrest and jail anybody who might compete with the medical marijuana dispensaries.

If you ask me that was a very smart move on the part of Andrew Myers.

Second you would make it illegal for anybody to grow marijuana, which could be sold cutting into your monopoly on marijuana sales.

While Andrew Myers didn’t make it illegal to grow marijuana in Prop 203, he makes it very difficult for people to grow marijuana. And of course that will make it very difficult for anybody to grow their own marijuana and cut into the sales of the dispensaries.

First Andrew Myers put the 25 mile limit in Prop 203. According to the Department of Health Services that makes it illegal for 96 percent of the medical marijuana patients in Arizona to grow marijuana.

Second Andrew Myers limited the number of plants that a person can grow to I think 12 plants. So that severely limits the amount of marijuana any medical marijuana patient can grow.

Third Andrew Myers requires the marijuana to be grown in very expensive and secure grow houses.

I think Prop 203 says you have to grow in an enclosed locked facility that can only be accessed by the medical marijuana patient.

Requiring people to grow in these expensive grow houses makes it too costly for many people to grow their own marijuana because they can’t afford to build the expensive grow house.

Last and best of all, I think Andrew Myers intended to use the police to enforce these rules. And of course that means Andrew Myers is using the police to put anybody that sells marijuana in competition with the dispensaries in jail and out of business.

I suspect that when Andrew Myers wrote these rules in Prop 203 about growing marijuana, he assumed that anybody that broke the rules was a person who was selling marijuana and competing with the dispensaries. And that he could have the police arrest the person to shut down them.

That gives the dispensaries the best of both worlds.

First the dispensaries get a government monopoly on growing and selling marijuana.

Second the dispensaries don’t have to pay a dime to enforce their government monopoly on growing and selling marijuana. The police will do it for them for free!!!! And us taxpayers will pick up the tab.

Last I suspect that the MPP or Marijuana Policy Project's initiative comes out it will have most of these things in it to allow the recreational marijuana dispensaries to put any unlicensed competitors out of business.

You can also see this blurb here. Or here here on Tripod. Or here on Facebook.