Sunday, December 1, 2013

Nebraska cannabis corridors, prison industry flourishing

Omaha: where they don't rubbah. You know, rubber...listen in on a party line: that's the lasting image of the town where my Union Pacific brakeman and conductor grandfather moved four girls in the 1930s. It's a place where Republicans are always on the wrong side of an issue:
In Nebraska, an NET News survey of county sheriffs and prosecutors concluded 66 percent of law enforcement officials surveyed felt legalization of medical marijuana in Colorado impacted the illegal drug trade in their region. Tim Rayer grew up in Nebraska. The opportunity to grow pot legally, something he’d done illicitly in his Omaha basement, brought him to Denver. His office is a bleak cinder-block warehouse, topped with razor wire, on the edge of downtown Denver. The buds and extracted oils harvested from dozens of plants inside end up behind the glass-covered counter of a nearby dispensary. Colorado residents with a doctor‘s approval and an patient card obtained from that state’s Department of Health are allowed to purchase. The day we visited he had just logged his 132nd consecutive weekly harvest. [Bill Kelly, NET News]
The ditches along the I-29 of my youth were adorned with cannabis from Sioux Falls to Omaha: descendants of an agribusiness destroyed by a xenophobic law enforcement industry now dealing with bulging prisons.

1 comment:

WeedBiz said...

It's an unfortunate byproduct of lopsided laws. The federal government should just legalize marijuana and the illicit drug trade would vanish over night.