Marijuana tracking on the way in Colorado

[kentuck]

Look out! Big Brother!
=================

<snip>
DENVER — Colorado wants to set up a first-in-the-nation tracking system of medical marijuana purchases to deter people from buying vast amounts of pot and selling it on the black market.

Patients and marijuana advocates fear they will be harassed by a Big Brother-type intrusion as computers and video cameras monitor every ounce of pot sold in the state. Officials are also considering fingerprinting marijuana patients and keeping tabs on pot with radio-frequency devices.

"This is a matter of my functioning daily living," said Diane Bilyeu, a 49-year-old woman who sometimes consumes up to 2 grams of pot in a day to treat her chronic pain since losing her right arm and leg in a 1997 car accident. "Some days I need more or less. I don't know what business it is of the government's."

Officials say the regulations will provide basic protections to ensure that the system isn't being abused by drug dealers and users.


Read more: http://www.gazette.com/articles/tracking-105476-way-colo.html#ixzz111PNNEGy

[MineralMan]

1. Legalize and Tax!

For pete's sake! It's so obvious a solution.

[kentuck]

2. It is legal and it is taxed...

That's the point!

[MineralMan]

3. I'm not talking about medical weed. I'm talking about weed

in general. Enforcing drug laws against marijuana is a huge money pit. Legalizing the stuff and taxing its sale will make it a money-maker.

Yes, there will be a lively market in homegrown weed, but there will be plenty of commercial sales and an end to the costly business of enforcing existing laws and trying and jailing violators. It's time. It's way past time.

Disclaimer: I stopped smoking it in 1974.

[ThomWV]

5. No. Would you legalize and tax garden tomatoes - legalize=yes, tax=hell no.

[Gold Metal Flake]

6. Tomatos?

Tomatoes = cucumbers

Marijuana = alcohol

Your analogy is fail.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Produce vs product.

Marijuana = cucumbers = tomatoes
Alcohol = pickles = ketchup

[Gold Metal Flake]

8. Since I am in California, I have a practical question...

What are the beneficial companion plants for Marijuana?

[mitchtv]

11. I would try large Marigolds

anti nematode, anti deer, rabbit , close resemblance, you want camouflage or insect repelling?

[Gold Metal Flake]

13. No. Just waiting for prop 19.

[MineralMan]

9. Tomatoes are food. Food is rarely taxed.

Weed is a drug. Recreational drugs are rightly taxed. I'd not tax it if it were used for medicinal reasons. As a recreational drug, I'd tax it like alcohol and tobacco. Even then, it'd be cheaper than street dope.

Life isn't free. Without taxes, you wouldn't like it here.

[Gold Metal Flake]

14. Under prop 19 your own 5x5 foot patch would not be taxed.

Only over the counter sales at legal, authorized distributors would be. And that would be on processed (dried & cured or extracted) product. So as I noted above it is not the same as me taking grapes from my backyard vine and eating them and then being taxed.

Folks are going overboard on the complication of the prop 19 concepts.

I guess I'm not specifically replying to you, Mineral Man, but in general.

[BeFree]

4. Good Idea!

Every f'n elected politician should be videoed and tracked 24/7.

We should be able to pull up a pols name on the internet and see where he is, who he's talking to.

Officials then could say the regulations will provide basic protections to ensure that the system isn't being abused by crooked politicians.

[Greyhound]

10. Oh great, another way to waste a few millions of other people's dollars "protecting us

from ourselves".

[kickysnana]

12. +1