Ya I'm the same up here, I could be 100% legal if I pay a fee. My wife and I have all the medical conditions to be legit but why enter a data base. I've gone this long without gov knowing, why would I want to pay a yearly fee and be identified? Zero benefit,just an ongoing cost with it. I can't see them coming down on a senior growing for personal use regardless of legalities now that its faux legal.
In the 90s and it may still exist in Texas, there was a marijuana tax stamp people could buy. You buy the stamp, put it on your sack of weed, and if a cop got it, you could not be prosecuted under double jeopardy since tax is the same as a fine in the USA in legal terms. However, to get that stamp meant you had to go to the state police and pay the fee/fine/tax. It also put people in a database and many were arrested and prosecuted under laws of transporting and buying it before paying the tax. It was a catch22 from the start.
But prohibition today is very different from back then in the USA.
Something far more sinister at play today and highly politicized more than ever.
Compassion is gone and it's being weaponized again.
In today's America, a MAGA stoner would be very happy to see a liberal stoner be locked up for weed.
We've never seen anything like this ever. It's always been a united front but now that it's divided, legal freedom doesn't stand a chance.
The old phrase, united we stand, divided we fall applies here.
Legal weed will fall. Only a matter of time.
I will take my chances in a trial by jury before I ever submit to government over reach.
I got busted growing outdoors back in the 90's.
5lbs wet weigh~! 6 months in jail.
I stopped growing and went back to buying my weed after that until it became legal here in NY.
Last time I bought it was $300 an ounce. That was probably around 2020?
Now the state makes $$ off it and it is basically worthless on the black market.
While I waited till it was legal and grateful for it [ I guess ] I still have not once stepped foot into a dispensary.
I served time for my weed I grew, NO WAY I give them a penny for it now.
I don't see states that went legal ever giving up one penny.
None ever have enough so it seems like a safe bet to me.
When it went legal in Cali and Colorado, I planned vacations to those states to partake and experience freedom.
There was nothing like it. No more shadows and hiding. Even got to see some commercial grows and sample Girl Scout Cookies when nobody had it anywhere in 2013.
Cannabis tourism got so popular in Denver and Vegas there's tours and all kinds of shit revolving around weed while on vacation.
Since then I've been in dispos in 4 different states and by and large, they are doing a wonderful service for so many people. Some of the people I've met in dispos have the most heart breaking stories about what brought them there and how western meds have failed them.
I'm a champion for dispos and we need more of them in every state whether they sell THC or hemp derived THC-A. Even today my feed is blwoing up from seniors worried about not getting the THC-A that's been helping them cope with pain, sleep, and other issues.
Trying to tell them we have a year until it's in effect but these people are not growers and don't even know how to make their own tinctures. There's genuine panic over this
As growers, it's ez for us to say well fuck it, I just grow my own anyways but for every one of us, I suspect there's 100 people who cannot grow and rely on dispos.
Going after THC-A is purely political for the GOP. An "own the libs" moment for the right since marijuana legalization has always been a pillar of democrat policy.
Also, the list of lobbyists backing it will keep campaign coffers full from alcohol and big pharma donors. It has nothing to do with safety or keeping kids safe.
Just another example of corporate interests dictating domestic policy, aka fascism.
Gas station shit needs to go away and everything needs to be easily looked up to know what's all in it, good or bad, and get the bad shit off the market. Education on safe THC would be far better for the public than prohibition ever could be but in this timeline of America, education is not welcomed by so many.
Texas Hemp has been doing an amazing job at educating the public who will listen. Even better educated than some legal states our stuff is so well traced. What this rollback will do is make the gas station stuff the only stuff available and since it will be illegal as well, simply be sold behind that same gas station and not at the counter.