The Genie is Out of the Bottle and She is Not Going Back In - Ask Paul Chabot

[ Image of Dr. Paul Chabot ]


Cops have come on board the License, Regulate and Tax Train. The genie is out of the bottle and they have apparently given up trying to put her back in.

California’s recently enacted medical marijuana regulation bill, AB 266, set up a system for the legal distribution of marijuana and the cops not only supported it, they helped write it. Granted AB 266 sets up a distribution system that is expensive, unwieldy and unfair, but it is workable.

Yes, it can actually get medicinal marijuana to patients and the California Chiefs of Police Association and cop organizations on down the line accepted it. This is a first for California and most likely the rest of the nation. I have not heard of any marijuana distribution system that cops have actually helped write, let alone encourage legislators to support.

Does actively working for distribution mean they are now no longer actively working for prohibition? Probably not – prohibition remains their default position, but this is more than a chink in their armor. Just how big a weak spot the chink turns out to be remains to be seen, but the deal is done and it’s gonna be a lot tougher to turn back then go forward.

One intriguing possibility is with the diminution of their prohibition mentality, more cops will start using marijuana. Being a cop can be stressful and I am sure their spouses will much prefer that they unwind with a couple joints then a couple beers. Maybe those that already do might even be emboldened to come out of the closet.

This tilt away from prohibition to regulation has actually descended to the bottom of the barrel where we find Paul Chabot and his drug warrior Coalition for A Drug-Free California. This group, that has never seen a prohibition law it didn’t like, has submitted an initiative petition to the AGs office that would actually set-up a legal medical marijuana distribution system.

Their initiative, the California Safe and Drug-Free Community Act, calls for “Closing and banning all privately owned marijuana dispensaries by July 1, 2017, and replacing them with state-owned dispensaries in order to eliminate black-market profits earned at the expense of citizens and our youth.”

Eliminating black-market profits sounds rational, but it’s about the only rational statement in its 12 pages of bluff and bluster. Paul Chabot is an ultra-right wing Tea Party Republican who zealously subscribes to the Ronald Regan school of thought that “Government is not the solution to our problem government IS the problem,” yet when it comes to marijuana he wants the government to grow and distribute marijuana through state-owned dispensaries. He doesn’t want the state to provide health care to our citizens but he does want it to provide marijuana.

Go figure but then again no one wants to. Even his absurd initiative has been greeted with such a lack of interest that if you type California Safe and Drug-Free Community Act into google, the only thing that doesn’t come up is his initiative.

That no one is paying any attention isn’t surprising in that they don’t even pay attention to what they are doing. If you go to the Coalition for A Drug-Free California’s website, http://www.drugfreecalifornia.org/, the home page has an ad for their 2013 taxpayer funded cop confab and public barred National Marijuana Policy and Strategy Conference. In fact if you click on the 2013 Conference ad, you come to a page that offers to let you buy the marijuanapolicyconference.com website for 99 cents.

(Since I know Chabot and his followers read my newsletter, you better grab that 99 cent website name soon cause in about a week, the 2013 ad will be down and it will be updated with something as equally silly or even sillier although their National Marijuana Policy and Strategy Conference would be hard to outdo for overall silliness.)

Getting back to Chabot’s initiative - granted it would severely impact the ability of patients to get medicinal marijuana but once again it does allow for a legal distribution system. Why didn’t Chabot file an initiative petition to repeal Prop. 215 and reinstate total and complete prohibition?

Perhaps even rationality challenged Paul Chabot has seen the writing on the wall and has given up all hope of returning to marijuana prohibition and the best he can do now is participate in setting up a distribution system that is even worse than AB 266.

As distasteful as AB 266 may be, it still has a bittersweet taste knowing what a totally bitter pill this must be for narco-cops and those who suckle at the tit of marijuana prohibition. We are no longer arguing with cops whether people should have access to marijuana - we are now arguing over how people should have access to it. It truly is a paradigm shift.

(If you find my "blog" of interest, then you might find my other off-the-wall take on all things marijuana of continuing interest. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter by going to http://www.marijuananews.org and at the top of the home page, click on NEWSLETTERS, fill in the boxes with name and email address, click on SignUp and you are done.)