Mark Sailors: Illegal, Quasi-legal and Legal Cannabis

Arcata Eye

Since 1937, cannabis, aka “marijuana,” has been illegal in the United States. At that time it was the second most prescribed medicine in the country. The physicians did not know that this “marijuana” that the Congress was proposing to make illegal was Cannabis Sativa, one of their most effective tools. As a matter of fact, the American Medical Association opposed the act because the tax was imposed on physicians prescribing cannabis, retail pharmacists selling cannabis, and medical cannabis cultivation/manufacturing; instead of enacting the Marihuana Tax Act, the AMA proposed cannabis be added to the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. Their protest came too late. Not since alcohol prohibition has there been such a failure of policy and practice. Let’s explore the dark side of illegal cannabis.

From the 1960s and ’70s, there was a movement, a back to the land moment that brought “hippies” to the North Coast. With them came their pot. This is the picture that has come to dominate.

It is false. The illegal cannabis trade is not full of hippies. These are business people out to make a buck, pure and simple.

...On November 5, 1996 things changed. Proposition 215 became the law of the land in California. No longer would patients have to fear arrest, or imprisonment for cultivation or use of medical marijuana, at least that is what we were promised. Since then we have had an INCREASE in marijuana-related offenses, not a decrease. We have seen police, DAs and entire counties DISREGARD the law that the voters enacted. Some, like San Diego, fought the law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and lost.