September 2016 Issue

scary Mexican and misleading
title “marijuana”. Does the Mexican
scare sound familiar to modern
politics? Why is this known travesty
of American history still comparable
to the corporate smokescreens
backed by the federal government
today?
The correlation is that we are
still allowing corporations to take or
give us the allowance of this natural
right of a plant, and our opinions
are still affected or spoken over by
the loud whims of the more well-off
lower percent. With these barrages
of laws and regulation we are
taking gardens from the gardeners
and giving them to the governors.
Mom and pop could save the farm
and help some people feel good in
the process, but they can’t afford to
re-vamp, or they are too close to a
school zone. Apparently one doesn’t
do much farming in a silk suit do
they?
Patriot Care is a Massachusetts
based company that has licensing
for cannabis facilities in Boston
and Greenfield, and now have both
a dispensary and cultivation facility
in Lowell. The company is directed
by CEO Bob Mayerson, who would
know much about big business, as
former president and chief officer at
Eastern Mountain Sports and tending
financial roles in Pepsi and Staples.
Patriot Care’s Lowell facility
joins Ayer, Brocton, North Hampton
and Salem as the only cities in Massachusetts
with facilities supplying
medicinal cannabis to patients. Patriot
Care will be opening a Boston
facility as early as late spring and
one in Greenfield will be finalized
over the summer. They have also
made an agreement with the city of
Lowell including such stipulations
that it will pay $25,000 for every
dispensary that uses their cultivation
centers products. It would make
sense that legal recreational cannabis
would dismantle and negate such
large investments these companies
put into medical cannabis.
Activist and model Brianna
Morrel elucidates as to why Patriot
Care has lobbyists that work hard
to prevent this. “Patriot Care has
associations with the anti-legalization
campaign in Massachusetts.”
According to Morrel, “Patriot Care
has vowed to never become a recreational
dispensary even after legalization.
Their board has also voiced
support for Michael Flaherty’s
zoning bill which would restrict how
closely dispensaries can open to
one another. Patriot Care’s lobbyist,
Daniel Delaney, has filed an anti-legalization
effort (supposedly on his
own accord) dubbed “Safe Cannabis
Massachusetts”. Delaney also has
a second connection to Safe Cannabis
Massachusetts through Greg
Czarnowski, an outsourced contractor,
who is the owner of the domain
registered to the anti-legalization
group.” Once more, the very same
markets that risk losing capital are
the one’s creating and disseminating
false information. Big business is
fueling and maintaining wrongful
prohibition, laws and enforcement
with their power and pull of big
pockets.
However, there are two
sides to be played and big taxes to
be paid, so the government allows
states the illusion that they make
their own choice. At the same time,
we allow federal cannabis laws to
stand by principles created after a
model which suggests that cannabis
has no medicinal value. A model
created by individuals who incidentally
hold a patent for medicinal
cannabis. We are told that we are
given the right to medical cannabis
in some areas, but we are not given
cannabis healthcare. Furthermore, a
patient’s license to use medical marijuana
from one state is not always
recognized by other states, even
if the state also legally recognizes
medical cannabis. These divide
and conquer techniques still pad
the biggest pockets. Phillip Morris
USA’s CEO Clifford Fleet owns
the cigarette companies as well as
all of the medications and tools to
quit using tobacco, so even if you
quit he still he doing ok. As a result,
those big pockets that are not getting
totally side winded by cannabis and
who don’t gain on both sides of the
legalization coin are getting smarter,
and they realize prohibition just isn’t
doing it for them.
Many cannabis businesses
halts and pitfalls are due to extremely
inappropriate and disproportionate
taxes, intended to keep the
industry in the hands of big business
J19