Quote:
Originally Posted by Beemnseven
On Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill read a statistic which said that nationwide, 81% of people polled now favor the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
What I'd like to know about are the 19% who disagree with that. If there's a terminally ill patient who finds some sort of comfort or relief from the use of marijuana, what kind of evil, twisted f*ck do you have to be to deny them something, ANYTHING that would alleviate their pain?
I will never understand that mentality.
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Worse are those people who seek to profit off these terminally ill patients.
Medical marijuana (MMJ) has been legal in Colorado for about 10 years now, and mostly unregulated. However, recently the state passed some new legislation which essentially transfers the regulation of MMJ from the Department of Public Health to the Department of Revenue. So, MMJ is now grouped with casinos, alcohol and tobacco. Their obvious motive is money and not the well-being of their citizens. There are more restrictions included in the bill to further increase their profits.
In Colorado a caregiver can cultivate and possess on behalf of their patients, but they can only sell to their patients -- and only at cost. Caregivers also must perform regular daily activities for their patients like cooking meals, cleaning, shopping, etc. A Medical Marijuana Center (dispensary) can sell to any patient, regardless of who is their caregiver, and doesn't have to provide any other services to patients. Caregiver = nurse, dispensary = retail outlet.
In the new bill, caregivers are now limited to 5 patients, and dispensaries have new licensing fees that are based on the number of patients they have (which determines how much they can possess -- not who they can sell to), which starts at $7,500 and goes up to $30,000 per year (there's talk of higher fees). It seems obvious to me that the state wants to funnel patients away from the caregivers and into the dispensaries, because that is where they can track everything, and that is where they get their licensing fees. In essence, the more patients they can funnel to dispensaries, the more money they will make. I expect them to continue to make laws to drive people to the dispensaries so they can increase their profits from sick taxpayers. What's really sad is that it is fairly certain that several big dispensaries lobbied for this bill.
In any case, an injunction has been filed to sue the state over the bill, so some things are likely to change. Waiting and watching...