I am surprised that this hasn’t been posted…the news is almost astounding. It seems that California Gov. Jerry Brown is going to put some real teeth into the enforcement effort against cannabis businesses that don’t become legal.
It seems that there is now an agreement in place where the California cannabis regulators are going to invite the DEA to the party for JOINT ENFORCEMENT activities. Which means that the same people that brought California legal cannabis are going to use their intel and work with DEA to wipe out the illegal activity where they feel it warrants sending a message.
This is truly frightening indeed! It reminds me of the dispensary owners in the state of AZ pushing for enforcement of state law as it pertains to caregiver growers. There has been a real effort to prioritize the needs of and preserve the well established oligopoly whilst pursuing the mom and pop grow shop.
Terrifying prospect that the DEA has been brought back into the mix.
The truly unfortunate part of all of this is that all of this should ideally be about all of the people that are doing very innovative, creative work with the plants, not about all of the paper shuffling, form and bureaucracy that comes with accounting, taxes, licenses, etc. The truly unfortunate part of is that when the regulators don’t think through the consequence of what they set up, law enforcement becomes the hammer that they use to "gently adjust the system to make it square…wrong approach.
Absolutely the wrong approach! Punitive measures are far from reinforcing the individuals/entities/corporations that are playing by the rules. Seems like a blast from the past to me, just wearing a new facade.
