Pubdate: Wed, 07 Jan 2015
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2015 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: Charles Pluckhahn

Marijuana

A NEW DRUG WAR

I chuckle at City Attorney Pete Holmes' "path forward": the city's 
and state's plan to create their own marijuana cartel to be enforced 
by the police, the courts and the prisons ["City Attorney Pete 
Holmes: 'Clearly commercial' medical pot shops not legal," The 
Evergreen, Jan. 5].

He's upset that medical "dispensaries" are engaging in "commercial" 
activities. This is "illegal," he says. The Rockefellers and the 
Vanderbilts didn't like competition either, but not even they had the 
direct power to throw rivals in jail.

This isn't going to last, Holmes and state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles. 
It was one thing to justify prosecuting marijuana growers and dealers 
for providing a drug considered dangerous. It's another to simply 
outlaw competition. The state's and city's cartel will be erected on 
a foundation of clay.

The truly amusing part about this, in a dark sort of way, is that it 
comes from self-styled liberals - who wind up being cartel builders 
and monopolists right out of the robber-baron era.

Congratulations, progressives of Seattle! In case anyone has failed 
to notice, you're just as greedy as anyone else. Think the drug wars 
are over? Not hardly.

Charles Pluckhahn, Seattle
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom