Nancy Sajben, MD sends this link to an article about the legalization initiative in Ohio in the November 1 New York Times, and the gist in a paragraph:
Issue 3, as the proposed amendment is known, is bankrolled by wealthy investors spending nearly $25 million to put it on the ballot and sell it to voters. If it passes, they would have exclusive rights to growing commercial marijuana in Ohio. The proposal has a strange bedfellows coalition of opponents: law enforcement officers worried about crime, doctors worried about children’s health, state lawmakers, and others who warn that it would enshrine a monopoly in the Ohio Constitution.
The Times piece by Mitch Smith and Cheryl Gay Stolberg includes a plug for the International Cannabinoid Research Society in the very first sentence, and a blurry photo of Don Wirtshafter, whose commentary on the situation in Ohio appeared here last week. Wirtshafter told the Times he’s been using mj for 47 years. The article is accompanied by a blurry photo of Wirtshafter by Andrew Spear. Was Spear and/or the art director trying to convey what the world must look like to heavy users? There’s also a blurry photo of Ian James, the political technician who organized the consortium of millionaires backingIssue 3. There’s nothing blurry about his world view.
Another country heard from (a former ally of Wirtshafter):
I did read the article by Donny Wirtshafter, and I totally disagree.
Any small step in the right direction is better than what we have had for the last 70 years.
Donny ignores the fact that illegal growers have acted as a monopoly with price supports.
I fight for taxed, regulated by the government and roduced, processed, distributed, retailed by big biz or small biz. I also fight for home growing for non-commercial uses, if you want to sell it to others then I want it regulated and taxed. That is how every normal product is made, I want Cannabis normalized, simple.
However the vote turns out on November 3, Wirtshafter expects legal challenges from the losers, and a move by the state legislature to create regulations in advance of the 2016 election.
Here’s a YouTube clip of Rosalind Russell and Jacqueline McKeever singing about the Buckeye State. The song —from the Leonard Bernstein musical “Wonderful Town,” with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green— starts at 2:40.
