I read an article today on The Wall Street Journal’s website that was typical of big media outlets (click here). It feeds into the theory that the boom in medical marijuana programs in America is somehow tied to Mexican drug cartels. Here is a news flash from someone that has seen marijuana being grown domestically for over 16 years and has been a medical marijuana patient for almost 4 years; American marijuana growers, especially medical marijuana growers, hate Mexican cartels. We are tired of being lumped into the same category as gangster smugglers that try to push bammer weed.
Who even smokes bammer weed these days? I made a pledge to my best friend in 1996 that I would never smoke that stuff ever again, and I haven’t. Nor have I ever needed too, with so much great stuff coming from Canada before Operation Frozen Timber, and so much SUPER local stuff since then. FYI big media; Mexican brick weed is dead on the West Coast, and only the most desperate individuals in the Midwest and East Coast buy it, and even then very begrudgingly.
The author of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article, Mary O’Grady, wrote some things that highlight the disconnect between big media and the reality of the pro-marijuana movement. O’Grady states, “marijuana use, through medical marijuana outlets and general social acceptance, has become de facto legal in the U.S.,” Really? Last time I checked marijuana was very much illegal, and cops are busting people all over the nation, even in medical marijuana states. Even as I write this article, over 70 % of the top marijuana related stories in the nation (according to Google) are stories dealing with busts or bans on medical marijuana dispensaries. The WSJ article lumps American marijuana consumers into the same article with the massive killings in Juarez, Mexico, as well as Al Qaeda, Pablo Escobar, and ‘other drug lords.’
I am lucky enough to be a patient in a state program that doesn’t get much attention (Oregon). I grow my own medicine, and use it responsibly and legally. I purchase all of my materials from locally owned stores and pay my electricity bill to the local utility company. Although I have never point blank asked any of these people if they are involved in a drug cartel, or if they are drug lords, I am EXTREMELY CONFIDENT that they are just average Oregonians, who pay their own taxes and also despise drug cartels.
I have several friends that still obtain their marijuana the old fashioned way; through a local ‘hook up.’ I have met literally hundreds, if not thousands, of these ‘hook ups’ throughout my life, and not ONCE was the hook up tied to any cartel. The only thing they were involved with was a weird guy/girl who owned a shed or basement, and had the balls to grow weed on the down low. Any money that was generated was either smoked or put to good use in the local economy. The closest the money got to ‘South of the Border’ was the local Taco Bell.
I will entertain an article that talks about how cartels are making big money off of growing marijuana locally (which is still debatable), but they are not making 50% of their profits from importing brick weed. If they were making so much money smuggling crappy weed, why would they be trying so hard to grow it in the US?? Please big media; get a clue, and quit associating responsible American marijuana consumers with this nonsense.
