Interesting piece on NPR this morning about the difficulty opening a checking account for these new businesses. Seems they make federally insured banks kinda skittish.

Although I experimented with pot by smoking a railroad boxcar full of it back in the day, I have long since given it up. However, I was in a band that played the main stage of the Hempfest in Seattle, and I'm proud of that. To hear the horror stories from the War on Drugs, is as scary as anything from the other fake wars - except, of course, for the phony War on Terror.

I see this development as inevitable. It seems like just yesterday that a band member in the movement was explaining to me that the curves proved this was going to happen. Given that, Oregon should have been in the forefront. It would have been good for business. Nobody knows how it will play out, but I've read that in countries where it has been legalized, use among young people actually goes down. I'm not sure about that, but that is what I read.

What I do know is that we are living in a surveillance state controlled by special interests like Big Pharma. They would rather deny people a good medicine than see their profits affected. That is a disgrace. Washington and Colorado will get some medical tourists who don't want to - or can't - get registered for a card, but do need marijuana for pain management, and to fight the withering loss of appetite caused by cancer treatments. That's good news.

Let's hope Washington and Colorado will inspire other movements to fight back against government oppression using the vote. Seeing the crowds up there at the Hempfest - roughly 70,000 a day - I was struck by how much political power they represented. Maybe, just maybe, this vote represents the beginning of a turnaround for America.

You're going to see an explosion of business up there and it won't all be about getting high. Hemp is one of the most amazing weeds for industrial uses as well. You can get fuel from it as well as building supplies. It's going to be very interesting - especially if the Federal Government backs off and let's States Rights prevail here. That's the big question, but eventually the government has to go along if the People decide something. That's the beauty of what happened.

Meanwhile, let the celebration begin. Although there was plenty of pot smoking at the Hempfest before - out of view - this year should be quite a change. The smoke rising up from Seattle should be visible from the space station.

Bill, the industrial hemp issue is the one I'm really watching. Yeah, everyone's going to talk about legal ganja available for sale, but the real money is going to be in farmers being allowed to grow hemp, especially in otherwise marginal farmland. I've been keeping tabs on a group of Idaho farmers that have been petitioning the DEA to allow them to grow hemp for the last four years, and the only real reason the DEA keeps scuttling the idea is because making hemp synonymous with marijuana makes their busts that much easier. Remove DEA opposition, and they'll be growing very profitable crops on farmland that otherwise requires ridiculous amounts of water and fertilizer for other crops.

Now, if you really want to see how the times are changing, consider that a few members of the Texas Legislature are suggesting legalizing marijuana in the state. I don't expect their legislation will ever hit the floor of the Lege (Rick Perry, in particular, is too beholden to the Southern Baptist Convention to ever allow anybody to have fun), but the mere idea of a state legislator suggesting this and not being subject to an immediate recall election is simply incredible. The real danger with this finally coming up for a vote in Texas isn't that it'll be a waste. The real danger, for our existing power structure, is that this will bring out a lot of people like me who don't smoke but who are sick to death of control freaks repeating propaganda from the 1930s. If this were to come to an open vote in 2014, at the same time most of the state's big offices come up for election, then Things Will Change and fast.

This is one less drug for gangsters to shoot up Washington neighborhoods over.

Thanks
JK