intact the unnecessary Trump tax cuts.

Our little town has a legal grow operation. Our WONDERFUL city commissioner (literally, she really is great, that is not sarcasm) voiced her opposition on the neighborhood app. My wife, a medical marijuana patient, contacted her about the issue and she actually came over to talk.

Kat, my wife, told her about her medical issues and that she took absolutely zero opioids for her pain. That marijuana, when ingested, helps her like no other prescription medications. The commissioner was afraid of a grow operation that would bring in the "bad" crowd.

Kat explained that this company (Truelieve) had a good reputation, that the operation had security, video cameras, the workers were screened for past legal problems and monitored closely for dishonesty and theft. That this is a growing (pun intended) market and good for the city, providing jobs and taxes. This open minded lady changed her mind.

She now is fully supportive of medical marijuana and the grow house.

Recreational marijuana? Maybe she'll support that too.

I have really bad irritable bowel syndrome. I tried everything with my gastroenterologist from dietary changes to pills- nothing worked. Then along came medical marijuana edibles, got rid of ALL my symptoms in a week. I have been symptom-free for almost three years now. I just take a small amount before bed each night. After almost 8 years of trying everything, and all it took was a little bit of weed. Amazing. While I am happy to have found a solution, I wish it had been available sooner.

African Americans..

But jokes aside, mass incarceration of African Americans over trivialities is the first thing that comes to my mind when I see stuff about pot legalization.

I mean Elon Musk can go and openly toke with celebrities. Whereas even with the sea changes in public attitudes lots of people (I don’t know the stats tbh, but I would imagine disproportionately black and or poor) are still languishing in prison over minor pot related offences. Again it is just a sense impression from scanning articles on the topic more than knowing the stats.

They do get the wrong end of the stick. On purpose many times.

It would decrease so much suffering all around.

When I was younger I saw many rich people get away with smoking weed and using drugs.

I added that in the post below-disproportionately black and or poor is my guess.
I have never thought that being poor and white looks much different than being nonwhite and poor.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/white-working-class-poverty/424341/

Divide and rule still works as a strategy sadly though.

and the War on Poor and Minority people just kept on going...

(As an aside I sometimes read about the corporate guys in tech etc and as far as I can tell far too much is framed as a war bts. It is almost the better option when their strategies are framed as games, performance art or sport :-/. On the whole I would rather be the football of fate than a civilian casualty in a “war”.

I don’t get the whole overuse of the “war” metaphor. War is hell people ;-/..)

...
Nixon’s speech marked the beginning of a new era of American drug policy. His announcement would lead to the mass imprisonment of domestic drug users from the 1980s onwards. But the real effect of Nixon’s speech occurred abroad. Here, rhetoric became reality; metaphor got real. Nixon’s speech let drug cops off the leash. And it sparked off a wave of extreme violence, which many drug producing countries in Central and Latin America are still living with today.

https://time.com/6090016/us-war-on-drugs-origins/

Between them Nixon and Reagan seem to have been behind a lot of America’s problems. And from my own grad school years I remember Bush and the Iraq war and of course now Trump. Poppy Bush is the best of the lot in the last 5 and a half decades or so.

Or, here's a Guardian article about how GWB's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar

I'm probably more negative/terrified about Republican/fascist politics than most people because I spent several years growing up in post-WWII Germany. What happened was not just an abstraction to me and it hasn't made me a more pleasant person to be around, sadly.

Yeah my ex was actually into researching the ties between the GOP and the Nazis. He has a DU account somewhere though he definitely doesn’t use it anymore. He is pretty anti-fascist and vigilante about nazis. So I know a little bit about Poppy, Prescott Bush etc.

And it is not as if we are paranoid pot users. This is from Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush

just a slap on the wrist. The lawyer knew the judge yada yada yada boom.
m

because his uncle was the Dean and got five slots to fill with whomever he chose.

coming into my car. It's worse than cigarette smoke. In the winter time, maybe it won't be so noticeable (as both I and the smokers will likely have our windows rolled up and the vehicle's heater recirculating the interior warm air.) People even fire-up their weed on the metro platforms and on the trains. Metro police do nothing about it. But I bet if someone lit up a cigarette, they'd rush to the scene and shuffle the offender out in handcuffs. Maybe.

I'm old and intolerant of such things.

benefits all citizens.