Men face 20 years sentence for running medical-marijuana operation: You can sell the drugs but you may not make a profit from it
In his book Oliver Twist Charles Dickens has one of his characters saying, “If the law supposes that, the law is an ass.”
Reading the following news story - yet another report from the ‘War on drugs’ front, I couldn’t agree more with what Dickens’ mister Bumble stated 170 years ago:
PDT FRESNO — Two Modesto men are facing mandatory 20-year prison sentences after being convicted of running a medical-marijuana operation that federal prosecutors labeled a criminal enterprise, authorities said today. Federal officials said the case sends a message to marijuana growers and dealers who believe they are shielded from prosecution under the California law legalizing medical marijuana use.
“Scarmazzo and Montes made millions by exploiting and hiding behind California’s medical marijuana law,” said McGregor Scott, U.S. attorney in Sacramento. “In this case, there was no conflict between state and federal law, as their conduct was illegal under both. California’s medical marijuana law clearly sets out that making a profit selling marijuana is illegal. These two set out to make as much money as they could as drug dealers, plain and simple.”
Let’s assume the prosecutor is right in stating the convicted pair were simply trying to get rich dealing drugs, while claiming to run a medical-marijuana operation. With drugs being worth so much money precisely because they are illegal, it’s no big surprise criminals will try their hand at anything in order to grow and to sell them. That’s simply a question of market forces - and drugs dealers understand these principles better than many a Wall Street banker.
Of course, it would make much more sense to legalise all these drugs than to have these weird situations like in California, where you can grow marijuana, as long as the drugs you harvest are then sold as a medicinal product. The message being that while it’s a criminal offence to sell the stuff to healthy people, it’s perfectly okay to sell these deadly evil products to the sick.
What I really don’t get though is this thing about not being allowed to make money from selling marijuana as a medicinal product. It’s a really interesting Puritanical loop: the stuff can make you high, so it’s bad. Granted, it can be used as medicine, but since the stuff also brings a smile to your face, you can’t make money from it, even when it’s labelled a medicine.
Mind you, it sets an interesting precedent: Maybe we should widen this law and forbid all the drugs companies making money from the sales of medicines. Surely, the same principle applies: When you cannot be allowed to make money from selling medical marijuana to the sick, it would be equally immoral to profit from other people’s illnesses as well?
Granted, the moment the government would go for this extreme version of social medication, all drug companies would immediately sell whatever assets they had left and close shop - and no new cures or medicines would be discovered and developed by the private sector. Surely though, that would be a small price to pay for being morally in the right - and let’s face it, when it comes to passing laws the whole ‘war on drugs’ thing shows that the government normally will prefer their own twisted morality over facts, logic and common sense.
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