More Motes and Oxen

I was on a zoom call with a couple of friends who live in central Massachusetts and they were telling me that the pot business is a howling success.  There are billboards on all the state highways.  The “dispensaries” as the pot shops are known are doing a land office business.  And we discussed how exactly the “growers” managed to protect their crop.  The theory was that although there were probably some crops outdoors, hidden from the view of the populace, mostly the stuff is being grown in locked greenhouses.  And we assumed this means that the “farmers” must have fairly robust security and probably a few guns thrown in for good measure.  One of the guys said that the biggest problem that’s become apparent is that the stuff being sold today is many times more potent than the stuff that used to be sold before legalization.  He mentioned THC levels that were near 90%.  And the upshot of this is psychological symptoms among the users are much worse and much more prevalent than in the past.  Anxiety and paranoia manifest at levels that render the users incapable of normal life.  They can’t keep a job or maintain relationships.

And it just struck me that here is a blue state policy to contrast with their alleged commitment to safety on the COVID front.  They’ll force you to be vaccinated and wear a mask against your will supposedly for your own good but they’ll allow a practice that they know is a mental and physical health threat and also a public safety hazard from the consideration of people driving under the influence and walking among us in a mentally unbalanced state.  In addition, since the FDA still considers marijuana illegal, they won’t get involved in regulating the safety of the pot that’s being sold and so any terrible mistake involving pesticides or other toxins finding its way into the drug cannot be prevented or adjudicated.

So here is the double standard.  They get to decide when freedom is important and when it’s not.  Freedom for me but not for thee.  But this definitely opens up the model for how the red states can change things in their favor.  Pick and choose the places where they will obey or defy federal law.  As an example, Texas needs to close their border with Mexico.  They should build their own wall a mile inside the federal wall.  They should arrest all illegal aliens and jail them until they agree to leave the country and if they come back make their next stay in jail very uncomfortable.  They should force all employers to obey immigration laws under the penalty of massive fines.  If the federal government squawks flip them the bird and continue on with real life.  And there are other things that make sense.  Welfare needs to be tightened up to the point where those who refuse to work should be so hard-up that they decide to leave and go to a blue state like California on their own.  Hell, that could be part of the policy to offer them bus or plane tickets to the blue state of their choice.

So that was what I was thinking about today.  Instead of freedom for thee but not for me let’s make it you live your life your way and I’ll live my life mine.