A version of this article appeared in Kush magazine.
In Montana, there are around 100,000 adult cannabis consumers. Some of them suffer qualifying medical conditions and use cannabis as a natural treatment for their debilitating symptoms. Some use it for non-qualifying conditions, such as insomnia, depression, anxiety, cramps, PTSD.
And then there are people for whom cannabis is a non-medical life enhancer: to increase their enjoyment of food, sex, poetry and cinema, or inspire their art and writing, gardening and programming, or enrich their social interactions, or simply relax after a hard day’s work.
There’s no reason that these two groups need to clash, and in fact, they often overlap. The card-carrying Crohn’s disease patient who derives both symptomatic relief and enjoyment from sharing a fat joint of Super Silver Haze with his buddies before kicking back on the couch to watch Pineapple Express (for the third time) is in both camps.
While cannabis can be a “precious medicine for the sick and dying”, that’s not all it is, and we run a real risk of painting ourselves into a corner and setting up needless conflicts within the cannabis community by insisting that it’s only for one group and not the other.
Legalization would be better for patients than the expensive and bureaucratic system we have now: No “qualifying conditions”, no annual doctor certification requirements, higher product quality, lower prices.
So why would patients not support legalization if given the chance?
Selfish ambivalence, for one. After all, the thinking goes, once “I got mine”, who cares about the rest of you “undeserving” non-patients, right?
Not exactly an enlightened position. Don’t forget that there were an awful lot of non-patients who supported medical marijuana back in 2004. How about returning the favor?
Another objection to legalization you may hear from the only-medical camp concerns taxation. They demand an exemption from taxation, because they say their cannabis is medicine, and no other medicine is taxed.
It’s a nice thought, but there are many reasons cannabis should be taxed.
- First, taxes are not inherently evil. Taxes ensure we have roads to drive on, that someone comes when we call 911, that we have a civil society in general. What’s taxed and to what degree is worth debating, but it’s absurd to start from a position that all taxes are automatically bad.
- Second, plugging cannabis tax policy into the law books makes all us responsible adult cannabis consumers in Montana part of a legitimate civil/political structure. It brings us out of the shadows, into the light.
- Third, while you and I may be passionate about pot policy, a whole lot of people don’t care much. Offering a new revenue source for critical public services can create new allies, and solve real funding problems. In fact, most cannabis consumers would agree that we’re the one consumer group likely to say “please, tax us!”
A final reason that some in the medical marijuana industry may oppose legalization: naked greed.
Medical marijuana is a partial market for cannabis consumers, and hence leaves a substantial portion of the black market intact. By preserving a black market for cannabis, prices (and profits, if your production is efficient) remain high for sellers.
There is no reason that this dried plant material needs to sell for $250 or more per ounce. The drastically more labor-intensive herb saffron sells for less. For perspective, a full football field of saffron flowers produces a mere one pound of the dried herb. A guy could could grow a pound of cured cannabis flowers in a spare bedroom or a corner of his back yard.
Whether the “I got mine” crowd, the naive anti-tax folks, or the greedy business types will be able to sink legalization in 2012 is yet to be seen. Of course the moralistic anti-freedom crusaders will make a vigorous showing as well, so we’ve really got our work cut out for us.
As the day approaches, cannabis consumers statewide should keep talking with one another about the details of legalization, acknowledging that compromise and some sort of tax or fee will probably be a necessary part of any proposal with a chance of passage. But how exactly should it work? What’s got the best chance of winning? Hopefully, we’ll all be able to see that liberating this plant, even via imperfect legislation, is just the right thing to do, and far preferable to the failed, expensive, and destructive policy of prohibition.
