This is the Letter to the Editor that started it
Personally I think NORML and MPP or Marijuana Policy Project has sold out the man on the street who wants to legalize marijuana.
Both NORML and MPP seem to have been taken over by the medical marijuana dispensaries who want the government to give themselves government monopolies on growing and selling marijuana so they can get rich selling us marijuana at $300+ an ounce rip off prices.
Yea, they want to legalize marijuana smoking for the man on the street. But they want to keep it illegal for the man on the street to grow or sell marijuana.
They seem to want to switch the current growing and selling of marijuana from the cartels to members of NORML and MPP, like Andrew Myers and the members of the Arizona Dispensary Association.
If we want to legalize marijuana the right way we are going to have to tell NORML and MPP to get lost. They have sold us out!!!!
Source
'Big Marijuana' is already here
Gina Berman and Ryan Hurley, AZ We See It 5:57 p.m. MST January 16, 2015
New numbers from the state show 10 tons were used last year. That's four times the amount consumed the year before. But that doesn't mean the whole state is getting high at home.
Advocates: 'Big marijuana' is already here, and it's not those pushing for a regulated industry. We call it the cartel.
In Sheila Polk and Merilee Fowler's guest column ("Why 'Big Marijuana' must be stopped," Viewpoints, Jan. 10), they naively refer to "Big Marijuana" as a greedy monster that will be created if a regulated system for marijuana is put in place.
We have news for them. Big Marijuana already exists, and it's called the cartel.
These are criminals who will rape, murder and steal to sell drugs to our children, and they were created and enriched by the very prohibition that Polk and Fowler advocate we maintain.
We tried prohibition in this country once and it didn't work. Prohibition created gangsters and criminals and did little to stem the supply of alcohol.
Prohibition won't work for marijuana, a substance, by the way, that is objectively far less harmful than the legal substances alcohol and tobacco.
Everyone can agree on one thing: We should do our best to keep marijuana out of the hands of our young people. Prohibition has been a spectacular failure in this regard. Ask high-school students and they will tell you unequivocally that marijuana is prevalent and being sold at their school every day.
Drug dealers don't check ID.
As a contrast, look at the success we have had convincing young people not to smoke cigarettes. According to the Centers for Disease Control, cigarette smoking by high-school students is at its lowest rate in 22 years.
Why? Not because we made cigarettes illegal. Instead, we taxed, we regulated, we demanded that sellers vigorously check ID, and we used the tax revenue to provide kids with real information about the dangers of smoking.
But for marijuana, our policies remain dangerously in the past. It is time for a more intelligent approach. Polk, Fowler and other prohibitionists must not have paid much attention on the first day of high-school history.
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Dr. Gina Berman and M. Ryan Hurley are president and treasurer, respectively, of Marijuana Policy Project of Arizona.