Working in Montréal today --The Monkey Cage

Good morning folks,

I am working in Montréal today.

I was going to lead off with some blathering about the U.S. election and even had a fairly decent quote to get us going.. Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage --H R Mencken.

I even thought about running with a scathing indictment of the News Media, that bull crap that they feed us under the guise as news when it is merely rating grabbing hyped up headlines..  Even started writing my lead-in .. That bitch Sandy didn't last long enough, the election in the U.S. is over, the only hope for CNN is that the meandering 500 mile border between Turkey and Syria erupts into WAR!

But then it hit me.

This U.S. election was really an assault on a Canadian Industry that we all hold dear.  This was an attack on the B.C. pot growers!

Yes, my friends, the B.C. pot industry is worth around 8 billion dollars to the Canadian economy, and two U.S. states while in the process of voting in Obama for a second term, specifically Washington and Colorado, two of B.C.'s closest pot smoking neighbors, have voted to legalize the bud sprouting leafy recreational plant, which according to Prof. Werner Antweiler, B.C.'s Saunder School of Business, will result in a significant market of B.C. pot go up in smoke.. Nipping B.C.'s profits in the bud?

That's right, defying Federal law they have voted to allow the bud, the cheeba, chronic, dagga, dak, dank, dope, doobage, draw, dro, electric puha, frodis, ganja, grass, green, hash, hay, herb, indo, instaga, kind bud/killer bud, kind, leaf, Mary Jane, nugget, nug, pot, reefer, schwag, sensi, skunk, sticky-icky-icky, tea, tree, wacky tobacky, weed.. You pickin' up what I'm dropping here?

Now what remains to be seen is the U.S. federal gov't take on this.  You see, in the U.S. Constitution in Article 1, Section 8 is a few words..  To regulate Commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states and with the gypsies, fortune tellers, casinos, and those guys that sell fake Rolexes at train stations.. and the Indian Tribes.

But it is this clause, aka the Inter-state Commerce Clause that the U.S. justice Department has operated under as they continued to raid, seize, arrest and generally hassle medical marijuana users in California.

The theory goes that if Bob can grow pot in his back yard in Colorado without fear of arrest, then he won't buy it from the illegal growers, causing the illegal grower's price to fall.  Standard supply and demand theory.  And, if that illegal grower was in another state, then the cross state border trade of pot would fall off, or increase, or do something.  But it would not be uniform!

And when you read 1-8 you will see that it is all about uniformity.  Uniformed Postal Service, Naturalization laws, Navy, Coins, Weights and Measures, Bankruptcy laws.. And uniform Commerce.  So in a nutshell.. it remains to be seen how free those in Colorado will actually light up.

 What a buzz kill.

Have a good day, responsible smokers wait till 4:20 :)