So Florida voters can amend the Florida State Constitution via the ballot. Next month has a number of amendments for voters to consider, most notably Amendment 3 to legalize marijuana. I've been increasingly skeptical about this simply because there is a very well funded TV advertising campaign. Someone is putting a lot of money into this, which I find suspicious.
Well, the devil is in the details, and the fine print for Amendment 3 is, shall we say, interesting. The Polk County sheriff cuts through a lot of the fog in a way that I find pretty convincing. While I'm not adverse to legal pot, this seems to be a pretty bad way to go about it. I'm not a fan of changing the Constitution so that particular interests can make money.
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Too much political activity these days is geared towards keeping people stoned, stupid, entertained, and thus, easy to control...
When Oregon legalized cannabis, they taxed it so highly that the illegal growers had every incentive to remain in business. Now Mexican cartels have illegal grow operations all over the state, and rural counties don't have the budget to eliminate them.
The pot industry is also saddled by so many complex regulations that it takes big money to get into it.
Oregon also opened up the industry to out-of-state investors and owners, and within a couple of years there was a huge glut of product on the market and most of the growers and processors couldn't make a profit. But the stoners are in seventh heaven: Weed has never been cheaper!
Earlier this year the Oregon Secretary of State resigned in disgrace after it came out that she'd been accepting $10,000 per month from one of the largest cannabis corporations.
Employers have extreme difficulty finding workers willing to take jobs requiring drug tests.
These are some of the problems, I'm sure there are others.
Same thing happened in Califrutopia: as predicted, the cartels, under no obligation to do things above-board, undercut legal weed, and are doing thriving business. And at the retail level, the amounts are legally untouchable.
Other observations:
Smuggling weed in is easy. So the cartels also bring in carfentanil (the garage-brew equivalent of fentanyl, only deadlier, and more addictive), along with methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin, with the result that the entire state is now awash in all the drugs that are supposed to be illegal.
Addiction and overdoses are at all-time highs (no pun intended), along with the resultant deaths, hospital admissions, and total waste of emergency resources. We now get ODs in their pre-teens all the way to people in their 60s. Also, drunks used to be (back when I started in the ED) one a week, and ODs one a month, on average. Now its 3-5 of each every night, forever, with no end in sight.
Every single homeless psych patient is positive for weed; more than half are also positive for meth and/or opiates.
This is also not your grandad's ditch weed from the '60s: this stuff is GMO'ed to about 99% strength, so people using it legally come in for intractable nausea/vomiting, leading to a 50% admission rate, and a minimum of a 6-8 hour ED visit to get their symptoms under control.
Until weed was legal in this state, I never saw anyone for pot use in the ED. Now it's a minimum of 1/night, up to 3-4, every shift.
Throw in DUI/DWI increases, and the resultant auto and motorcycle accidents and trauma, and everything is just ducky for working in the ED if you want full employment for life, forever.
It's wasting literally billions of dollars annually in wasted medical resources, besides police and court costs, in return for negligible returns to the state from the legal weed shops.
It's literally become the gateway drug to hell on earth, with no end in sight, and legalizing it was the stupidest, most disastrous thing they could've done.
Just like we told anyone who'd listen, before and after.
Do your state a favor, and just say no.
Lived in quite a few states when in the military. Came to FL in 2000 -- I have never seen a state proffer so many constitutional amendments, and when on the ballot the wording is often misleading. I think most of the past, and present, issues belong in the legislative process, not in the form of constitutional amendments..
I agree. Here in Florida, we have seen a huge increase in people with cannabinoid emesis syndrome ever since medical weed was passed. We don't admit them, we give them IV Reglan in fast track and send them home with instructions to ease up on the weed. They don't believe us when we tell them that marijuana is causing it, so we see them again next week.
I do believe that one of those huge marijuana growers/distributors (if not the largest) is John Morgan, who was the largest driver behind Florida getting medical marijuana. They call him "Pot Daddy."
He is an ambulance chasing attorney who made himself into a billionaire by suing people as a no recovery/no fee lawyer who was the first lawyer to advertise on TV: "Morgan, Colling and Gilbert, For the People." His firm collects nearly $2 billion a year in legal fees and employs 3,000 people.
He is a Democrat megadonor, and served as the Florida campaign finance director for the Clinton campaign. He is a huge donor and was a cash bundler for both Clintons, Obama, and Pelosi.
The Biden family who needed a ride to the Biden inauguration flew with him to DC on his private jet, and Joe Biden's brother was offered a job at Morgan's firm. Morgan donated over $300k of his own money to the Biden campaign.
That's why things like marijuana and abortion wind up on the ballot during presidential election years- it's a "get out the Democratic base" maneuver. Don't tell me that Democrats are the party of the little guy and that they are going to tax the rich. It's all smoke and mirrors.
A) They are ruled by tax junkies.
B) Prepare for a jump in broken car windows.
An interesting side note is that a friend sent me a link to a Christian website with info on amendment 3 that had the same points Sheriff Judd made. They point out the "big marijuana" industry is almost entirely behind this, having spent well over $75 million to get this far. No wonder there's no mention of growing your own that might not get you into an ER as predictably as their weed.
Trulieve is, I believe, the biggest one behind the ad campaign. Don't know who owns them.
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