The Social and Economic Impacts of Cannabis Legalization. Louis Shalako.

The author's sativa of #unknown_origins

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Louis Shalako

 

The legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada has had many effects of a social and economic nature.

Articles have been written on the corporate and government tax revenues, articles have been written on diverting low-level drug crimes out of the correctional system. Articles have been written on the subject of road safety, and whether driving under the influence of cannabis results in a higher incidence of traffic accidents.

Articles have been written noting that cannabis use can reduce the use of opioids in patients suffering chronic pain, for example.

There have been other effects. The old black market model, if we may use the term, was a scarcity model. With over-production, plus a much-modified black market, or grey market, we have gone to an abundance model. That much seems clear.

We have new neighbours in the building. They’re very nice people, very quiet and well-behaved. It struck me that one or the other or both, (and there are more than one family), are employed. At the very least they must have a stable income.

I always like to know who’s who—and who’s what.

It also struck me that there really isn’t a lot of excess traffic. It hasn’t always been like that. Years ago, folks would come into the back parking lot and yell up at a third floor balcony. They didn’t seem to have cell phones, or perhaps the buzzer didn’t work in the front lobby. And there was a hell of a lot of coming and going—all hours of the night and day, all of them slightly sketchy individuals...some of them known to you, because you see them all over town.

Also years ago, we all had the friend, the friend who had been nickel and diming it all over town for thirty years. Since high school, in other words. And that friend had constant traffic. We know, because we also sat in that basement, with the haze of blue smoke and the six or seven people watching whatever was on the television, and glancing at the clock because rule one was that you had to stay for a minimum of half an hour. That way the cops would never guess, right?

No matter how cool one was, no matter how trustworthy each and every individual was, the plain fact was that everybody in town had heard of some of these characters. It was not a big secret. Especially with six or seven vehicles all packed in the driveway, and people coming and going, and some folks dumb enough to bring a friend, an unfortunate who wasn’t known, and therefore had to sit there in the car looking inconspicuous, and innocent, and all of that sort of thing.

(Let's hope they didn't have to pee. - ed.)

We all had that one (or two, or more) friends who got popped in a vehicle, yeah, with a real smorgasbord of dope, meth, cash, stolen phones, stolen credit cards, pills, coke, and their buddy, both of them already having long records, and they went away for years...years, ladies and gentlemen.

Nowadays, there are probably still a few people dealing out of the front room, the basement or at the kitchen table. They’re in it for the money, just like everyone else…what the basis for competition actually is, is a very good question. They’d have to be getting it pretty cheap somewhere. It would have to be something really special.

With a legal bud shop just around the corner, you know they are never going to run out, have a dry spell, or whatever. They’re ordering it by the hundred-weight these days. You can use a debit card...the government website will take your credit card. One thing they will not do is front it to you. I reckon that's a good thing...you're only going to get in so deep.

With the grey market, (I say that because some recent convictions resulted in fines, at a couple of grand, a few grand, nothing like the sentences of some years that might have been handed down back in the day), the prices have fallen on some products. There are still expensive cannabis products, but there is a lot more competition on price. It’s not like your buddy dealer, who had maybe one or two kinds of pot…a bit of hash, and maybe he knew where to get coke. These guys have fifty or a hundred strains. Hash, oil, paraphernalia.

Nowadays, when law enforcement sees the sort of incessant driveway, back-door sort of traffic, all kinds of people of a certain profile, some of whom are known, one way or another, it would seem pretty obvious that something is going on. And it’s not likely to be cannabis sales, although undoubtedly someone in the crowd may be in simple possession of a product, of unknown provenance, and yet it may well have been purchased from a legal source. Nowadays that is perceived as much less serious.

The author is presently growing cannabis on the balcony. They began with seeds, dirt and water, when the temperature seemed warm enough in early June.

There are three plants, two of them pretty big. One is a sativa, heavy with buds and smelling skunky. He’s been doing it for three years, no one has said a thing. The landlord included, but then, the author is not using high-powered lights and some of the other high tech stuff people do in closets, spare bedrooms, or in some cases, filling an entire apartment with a grow op; in fact this particular landlord has had exactly that experience.

Rumour is—an Asian gang, and an organized operation.

As for myself, I appreciate the fact that levels of paranoia about smoking a little pot has (or have -ed), been reduced or eliminated.

Compared to all of the other problems in the world, it really isn’t much of a problem.

 

END

 

Louis has books and stories on Smashwords.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

Let A Fucking Kid Drive On A Fucking Road, Ladies and Gentlemen. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

My nephew is eighteen or nineteen years old. He’s in his first year at York University, whose faculty is on strike for wages, job security and working conditions. Which is a bit ironic, as this government has sort of pretended to tackle precarious work and low wages, at least on the front pages of local journalism. They're all about fair wages, right.

<Vomits in unrestrained fashion.>

(He means local journalism, ladies and gentlemen. -- ed.)

When it comes to putting the taxpayer's money where the fucking government's mouth is, they're surprisingly coy--

He’s had driver training, and he’s got his beginner’s license.

Of simple curiosity, I asked him today, when he would be okay to drive on his own.

“Five years, Uncle Louis.”

Five fucking years.

Apparently, he has to go through the G-1, the G-2, and the G-3, and the G-4, and the G-5, all of which demand some fee and some written test, before he can drive on his own, drive without another licensed driver in the passenger seat beside him, drive before dawn or after dark, or drive on a 400-series highway.

Five fucking years, ladies and gentlemen. In the mind of a teenager, this is never going to happen, and I know that very well from previous experience. So why should they even try.

When I was a kid of sixteen, I bought a car for a hundred and fifty bucks, I paid six hundred for the first six months of insurance, while I was just getting on the road.

I got my beginner’s a few weeks after my sixteenth birthday. Back then, you could get your old man to teach you to drive, practicing in a parking lot at a nearby mall or community college.

You could get a ways out of town, and the old man would let a kid drive, all the way from Sarnia to Owen Sound, admittedly at night, and with the instruction to just cruise at eighty or ninety kilometres per hour, while he caught a few zzzs and you learned how to use a manual transmission.

I can’t help thinking that my nephew, whose university education has been disrupted due to this government’s intransigence regarding unionization, collective bargaining, and precarious work of a white-collar nature, is being royally fucked over in terms of his employment prospects, due to the fact that he’s not legally entitled to drive on a fucking road, ladies and gentlemen.

You'd be surprised, just how many higher-paying jobs, demand a simple driver's license. Not every kid is going to work at Tim Horton's or Burger King for the rest of their lives.

You got another thing coming, if that is what you rat-faced fucking pukes believe.

As for the government and the bourgeoisie, what the fuck is wrong with you people.

END

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Thank you for fucking reading this.

Payday Loan Scam Still Going Strong In Ontario. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako

Simple charity will never be the solution to poverty. The problem is simply too great, too pervasive.

There are too many reasons. There is no one, single cause of poverty in this province and this country.

The subject is so complex, it is best to tackle the reasons one at a time.

***

The payday loan scam is still going strong here in Ontario, presumably in the rest of Canada as well.

This is the one, where people who are already well below the poverty line, whether working full or part-time, on the Ontario Disability Support Program or the so-called Ontario Works benefit, (welfare), the elderly, the mentally-ill, and yes, the addicts and the alcoholics, line up to borrow a hundred bucks, perhaps a couple of hundred, in order to make it through the month.

Sometimes it’s some small, unexpected emergency, a car repair or the kids need clothes for school. There are certainly legitimate reasons for a small, short-term loan in the family household.

Whatever. Ultimately, the scammers are taking the taxpayer’s money out of the mouths of the hungry.

My neighbour went to a so-called ‘cash-store’ last month. She says she went twice. She borrowed a total of $220.00, and at the end of the month, when she got her ODSP benefit, she repaid a total of $273.00.

The total term of the loans were less than two weeks. That is fifty-three dollars and some small change on a loan of a couple of hundred bucks, for less than two weeks. These interest rates are usurious, and the worst part, is, she’s starting off the next month, almost three hundred dollars down—in a hole, and her total benefit is the provincial disability benefit of $1,151.00 per month. She doesn't actually get all of that, due to some help from CMHA.

She’s on disability. The Canadian Mental Health Association kicks in on the rent, I don’t know how much because she doesn’t either. She’s out on a Community Treatment Order. Her social worker shows up every day to make sure she takes her medications, otherwise its back to hospital for her—maybe even permanently, although her illness seems to respond well to continuing treatment.

She’s back there every month, (I mean the cash store), and this has been going on for years. 

Basically, they’re like pimps, living off the avails of someone else’s disability pension. Sure, its nickel-and-dime shit, but they got a lot of them.

I told her, that if she could just stay away from there for as little as two months, she would have beaten them.

(This coming from a guy who maxes out the credit card every winter when things are slow, and never quite gets it paid off in summer, when things are a bit busier. The yearly rate on the credit card is 28 %, which seems more than high enough. Yet compared to the so-called payday loan operations, it seems almost benign. But it isn't, not really.)

This business is so lucrative, that the money stores have sprung up like mushrooms after a summer rain.

There must be twenty of them in this town, and that is in a city (Sarnia) of only 72,000.

***

I know a couple of guys, they got sucked into transferring their credit card balances to a service provider offering a much lower interest rate. It was an introductory rate—less than half of what they were paying.

It worked so well, that they ended up transferring their balances around about every six months…and they signed up for a handful of new credit cards as well. After all, it was so much easier to make the payments, and they were both working. 

Naturally, sooner or later, they ran into trouble. A layoff, a slowdown in the work, illness, a bad break. They were always maxed out and therein lies the problem.

Ultimately it turned into a bad debt for all parties. Their credit was destroyed, and the debt was ultimately uncollectable. When all this occurred, they were so enthusiastic, they sucked a few others in as well. Oh, yes, they told me all about it. The thing practically sold itself. 

Anyone that could get credit, that is, and there are a few who can’t, and never will.

It was good for nobody, in the end—not everyone ends up like that, of course. Some people smarten up and learn the credit game in the end. Maybe they just didn’t have so many bad habits. Maybe they’re just lucky. Maybe they’re continuously employed somewhere…in which case they can make the payments.

Once you scratch the surface of the problem, it quickly becomes clear that the solution to poverty requires a plan, one that takes into account all aspects of the problem. A plan that attacks from all directions at once, a plan that involves all levels of government, federal, provincial, regional, county and municipal. It will require the cooperation of certain institutions, banks, business, commerce, industry, and private NGOs.

It has to involve the individual as well.

This plan will require some very well thought-out tools and an enlightened, long-term policy that all can commit to.

END

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