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September 25, 2006
Further Evidence of an Enormous Cannabis Market
As I’ve been saying with increasing certainty since late 2002— an opinion based entirely on my interviews of Californians seeking ‘medical marijuana’ recommendations— the passage of Proposition 215 in 1996 was a pivotal event with real potential for changing American drug policy. The bad news has been that, so far, neither the policy’s full-time supporters nor its full-time opponents seem to have learned much. The good news is that there is now considerable evidence to suggest that trends partisans on both sides have been simply too blind or preoccupied to notice may be about to overtake them.
I refer to the knotty issue of pot’s continuing popularity, despite nearly forty years of fierce law enforcement efforts to suppress it. Sooner or later, the long-avoided questions of what that popularity is based on and why it has been so persistent will have to be answered. As is usual with any policy, the unintended consequences may be the most important, and as is also often the case with policies in which mistakes were neither recognized nor acknowledged, the longer they were in effect, the greater the damage to both society and the reputations of those seen by history as most responsible.
Another straw in the wind testifying to the sheer size of California’s pot market appeared yesterday in the form of a detailed report on a new phenomenon: the purchase of tract homes in the Central Valley for use as indoor grows by Asian crime syndicates, apparently to avoid scrutiny at the Canadian Border, which has increased since 9/11. Whether that market is thought of as ‘recreational’ or ‘medical’ use, its size and continued growth really beg the same questions.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at September 25, 2006 06:24 AM