Gov Richardson endorses MMJ bill with 30 day legislature

[firefox]

This kind of comes out of the blue as Richardson could be seen to have taken the mandatory drug warrior oath before gaining party support for Governor. The former Governor Gary Johnson was the most outspoken politician in the country for adopting harm reduction, which implies legalization of laughing grass, although he was outspoken enough to say it explicitly.

The article is up on it at Cnews so I really see no need to put up four paragraphs here, when if you are interested the whole article is a click away- http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread21495.shtml

This does give me a chance to introduce the writing of Lehder, who at times could make the most poetic statements at CannabisNews.com. He was from New Mexico and wrote two things I wish everyone could read. And it is not so much that his words are painted on a canvas of legalization, but that his words really call us first to be real.

Lehder wrote this four years ago and it is an example of a citizen's report. It is titled "New Mexico: Land of Ignorance". I hope you read the rest of it at http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11693.shtml#2

-----------------------------------------------

All of Albuquerque, like Gaul, is divided into two hundred and seventy parts; each part is harassed by a gang of eighteen to thirty cap-backward, window-busting, screwdriver-toting punks aged thirteen to twenty-two. These gangs derive their livelihoods by selling drugs. They gangs could not exist without a War on Drugs. Yet their members make enough money to never think about school or work and have no motivation to get educated or even go to sleep at night so they can get up to go to school or work. These kids make a living selling marijuana, crack and speed, thanks to the War on Drugs.

The Central avenue sidewalk is too filthy for old shoes and when you've finished all five biographies of Lucille Ball there's not much left to do in the downtown library that opens a little later each year, now not until 10:30 AM. New Mexico has the highest rate of drunkeness and drunk driving in the country and if you move there your auto insurance rate will double because fewer than half the drivers hold any insurance at all, and if you drive after dark you'll be stopped at a roadblock and asked how much you've had to drink. Until two years ago, you could buy your booze at "drive-up windows" - the same way you get your burgers at McD's.

We can hope for best from the New Mexico legislature, but last year's effort to decriminalize marijuana was shot down with the usual scare and propaganda tactics. Instead of decriminalizing marijuana, the legislature voted to maintain cock fighting as a legal sport in New Mexico; it voted to introduce alcohol sales in the public museums, and it voted to allow the carrying of concealed handguns. So an upstanding citizen can get shit-faced at the museum and carry a pistol to the cock fights to protect his wagers. But if you're a student studying quantum mechanics quietly in your apartment and want to take a break with a relaxing reefer then you're subject to arrest and expulsion.

If you rent an apartment in Albuquerque, God Luck, and I hope you like loud music - day and night. I hope you like the endless ruccus of fighting and alcoholic yelling through the walls and super loud televisions blaring through your ceiling, and god help you if you want to quietly read a book. Because the policies of the New Mexico legislature demotivate people and hold the people in ignorance: they promote drinking and discourage reading, and the money that ought to be used to offer decent treatment for alcoholism and for buying decent books for the library is spent on narcs who watch pot deals on the street and on cops to patrol the library because there's so many homeless drunks in there and few readers.

------------------------ regretfully snipped-------------------

And I will always remember Lehder for this comment- http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread17087.shtml#4

[400Years]

1. cool

good news indeed!

[Warpy]

2. Hey, it's not that bad!

Albuquerque has the highest per capita count of professional writers in the country and the largest number of indie bookstores. People here read, they just find they need to buy their books new or even used because the library funding keeps being cut (the writer's correct about that). He's also right that alcohol pretty much owns the state lege. Getting those drive up windows banned was a really big deal here, and the liquor industry fought it tooth and nail (even though it made such perfect sense).

As for the gangs, yeah, they're around. They smile and wave when I go by on my electric moped, so I guess if you're a little weird, they relate to you. I don't hear the loud music or the gunfire because I live in the War Zone, oddly the safest area of the city per police department statistics. People took things into their own hands around here and organized groups of their own to go bang pots and pans outside dope houses to encourage the scumbags to live elsewhere, and it worked.

But yeah, Richardson is dead wrong on drugs like he's dead wrong on most economic issues. He is, after all, a typical DLC party conservative who shot down any possibility of an election audit after crooked ES&S machines subtracted 17,000 of our votes from the national races. As for MMJ, there's been a medical pot law on the books here since the early 1970s. What has never been passed was a way to get the pot to patients. That means no funding or even protocol for distribution to patients with prescriptions, meaning the law is a farce. If Richardson addresses THAT part of it, I may take back some of the nasty things I keep saying about him.

Some. Well, maybe.

[firefox]

3. NM law suffered from the word "prescription"

I get things confused when relying on memory, but I believe New Mexico MMJ laws called for prescriptions and no doctor can prescribe a Schedule 1 Substance. It effectively killed it. California allows for legal medical cannabis with a doctor's "recommendation".

[High Plains]

4. That was Arizona.

That law is still on the books, and nobody's getting medical marijuana there because of that wording. It was a valuable lesson for future initiative writers.

[High Plains]

5. This bill should have passed last year. The support was there.

It passed the Senate (I think), but was killed in the House (I think)for reasons that had nothing to do with medical marijuana. A powerful member was pissed off at the bill sponsor over the member's real estate bill or some such shit.

It should fly this year, but it's a short session.