A Column By John Sinclair
Highest greetings from the Motor City to begin the fun-filled and frosty month of February, and to start off with a bit of good news, Bob García reports in Occupational Medicine that their largest study yet demonstrates that workplace safety is not impacted by cannabis use and that cannabis opponents who believe consumption leads to workplace accidents have no argument.
In a recent study on the “job discrimination aspect of employee drug testing programs,” Occupational Medicine reports that employees with a history of cannabis use over the past year have “just as good job safety records” as do non-consumers.
The study was based on a sample of 136,500 Canadian workers and found “no association between past-year cannabis use and work-related injury” for employees in any occupation, including those who worked in high injury risk occupations.
Paul Armentano of NORML points out that “It is time for workplace policies to adapt to this new reality and to cease punishing employees for activities they engage in during their off-hours that pose no workplace safety threat.’’
Each instance of proving that the anti-marijuana mythology is ill-founded and incorrect just demonstrates how completely the entire fabric of the War On Drugs was manufactured out of the sick minds and paranoid racist fantasies of the lawmakers and opinion shapers of America.
For 80 years these criminal thugs have harassed and persecuted people like ourselves just because they could get away with it. They’ve tracked us down, kicked in our doors, confiscated our stashes and belongings, seized our bank accounts, arrested us, subjected us to trials and other legal proceedings, sent us to prison and barred us from assuming the lives of full citizens upon our release from incarceration.
Nowhere is there any evidence that this is necessary or intelligent behavior. Nowhere is there any proof that marijuana is a dangerous drug—or even a drug at all—nor is there a single indication that smokers should be punished for using marijuana.
Weed is simply a benevolent herb created and nurtured by nature that will get us high if we smoke it and ease our aches and pains when they give us problems. It enhances conversation and other human interaction and does wonders for our sex lives.
Most important right now after 80 years of malfeasance by the authorities with respect to weed is that just about 2/3rds of all Americans see no problem with people like ourselves using weed and in fact want some for themselves as soon as possible and as often as they see fit.
Now the State of Michigan has undertaken a push to raise millions of dollars that would be used to improve diversity and help disadvantaged groups succeed in the cannabis industry.
Data collected by the Michigan Marijuana Regulatory Agency in December show that only 3.8% of those with an ownership interest in licensed recreational marijuana businesses in Michigan are Black and only 1.5% are Hispanic or Latino.
The voter-approved Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act of 2018 directed the agency to create a plan to “promote and encourage participation in the marijuana industry by people from communities that have been disproportionately impacted by marijuana prohibition and enforcement and to positively impact those communities.”
The agency purports that it “is committed to making Michigan the model agency in the country, including being a leader on diversity, equity and inclusion in the marijuana industry,” the report said.
Unhappily, they have recommended increased marijuana taxes to achieve their goals, which could easily be met by properly allocating the strenuous existing tax revenues to the problem instead of sticking up the marijuana community for more tax money.
Money raised by the new taxes, they say, could provide training and partnership programs “for social equity individuals who lack direct financial and professional operational experience to start a licensed business but meet a multitude of key social equity and social economic criteria as an eligible employee to ownership candidate.”
Andrew Brisbo, executive director of the Michigan Marijuana Regulatory Agency, said he will develop a permanent equity and diversity working group to follow through on the recommendations.
Here’s a bit of good news from Washtenaw County, where Lee DeVito reports that newly elected Prosecutor Eli Savit has announced a new policy directive aimed at combatting racial profiling and banning drug charges stemming from racist ‘pretext stops.’
Issued on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the 10-page policy directive prohibits assistant prosecuting attorneys from filing drug charges that stem from “pretext stops” by police officers — or when an officer detains a person purportedly as a result of an observed traffic or ordinance violation but are really looking for drugs or other contraband. The practice disproportionately harms people of color.
“Today’s policy directive is about rebuilding trust in our community,” Savit says in a statement. “We are sending a message that we are not interested in pursuing contraband charges that stem from racial profiling.”
Ranging further to the east, Kyle Jaeger reports that
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has called for marijuana legalization in his 2021 State of the State Address. The governor said enacting the reform will help fill a significant budget deficit and promote restorative justice.
“We will legalize adult-use recreational cannabis, joining 15 other states who’ve already done so,” Cuomo said. “This will raise revenue and will end the over-criminalization of this product that has left so many communities of color over-policed and over-incarcerated.”
The governor says that legal marijuana will “create more than 60,000 new jobs, spurring $3.5 billion in economic activity and generating more than $300 million in tax revenue when fully implemented.”
Finally, the latest news from Amsterdam is coming entirely from the negative direction. Cecilia Rodriguez and Senay Boztas report that “cannabis tourism” may be coming to an end in Amsterdam if the environmentalist mayor Femke Halsema gets her wish to ban foreign tourists from the city’s coffee shops by the time coronavirus travel restrictions are lifted.
Before Covid-19 lockdowns, the coffee shops, along with the renowned red-light district, attracted more than one million visitors a month. A total of 46 million people visited the Netherlands in 2019, with most coming to Amsterdam and many buying and smoking cannabis at the marijuana shops.
Now the public prosecutor and the police are supporting the mayor’s move, and he business community, particularly in the city center, has joined them. There’s a drive in the cityto control the flow of young tourists who arrive with the single intention to smoke marijuana.
The proposal follows the example of other cities in the south of the Netherlands, including Maastricht and Den Bosch, which saw their coffee shops getting overloaded by visitors from Germany, France and Belgium and, as a result, already have banned tourists from their cities’ coffeeshops.
Cannabis trade has become “too big and overheated,” the mayor has said repeatedly. The shops have been allowed to remain open during the COVID-19 pandemic, but customers have to take their purchases outside.
The demand for cannabis in Amsterdam has kept growing year after year. Research commissioned by the local government indicates that for 57% of foreign visitors, a trip to a coffee shop was a “very important” reason for their arrival.
According to the Ministry of Public Health, the Netherlands has 570 coffeeshops — 166 of them (30%) in Amsterdam. Of the 166 coffee shops licensed in Amsterdam, the plans project that 68 would be enough to support local demand.
Amsterdam in 2025 wants to have a city centre where a ‘different’ kind of visitor and ‘Amsterdammers want to come’, according to the new city plans. The City aims to rebuild ‘a valuable visitor economy’ by 2025, when Amsterdam will celebrate its 750th birthday. Good luck!
FREE THE WEED!
—Detroit
January 22-24. 2021
© 2021 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
