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.

 

 

Zoomer

Louis Shalako

I was heading to the smoke shack to get a couple of packs of smokes.

There was a familiar figure coming up the street on his crappy old bicycle, most likely stolen or given to him to pay off some small drug debt, (from a bigger loser than him?)

Let’s call him Zoomer.

We’re the same age. We grew up on the same street. We went to the same school. 

We played street hockey together. As we got older we drank together, smoked pot together, chased girls together, and indulged in a little bit of petty crime together.

Zoomer was clearly well on his way to alcoholism even back then. He was the only guy I know who could carry a two-four of beer on a ten-speed bike. This guy rolled joints the size of your thumb, but then he never worried about where the next bag was coming from. He would just go out and steal some more money when he ran out. This was quite shocking to staid, working class guys like me.

See, I always had to work, to earn my money.

Later, when I was going to college and had a real nice girlfriend, Zoomer was making the papers, the Provincial Court section, several times a year. He has a rap sheet as long as your arm.

He’s the one that stole a Datsun 240-Z, (someone left the key in it). He was drunk as a skunk, high on acid, and doing laps around the Central High School track, which at the time was packed clay and gravel. (Sounds kind of fun, eh.)

He looks pretty wild these days. His hair is all over the place, but I doubt if he’s cut it in years.

His face looks like it could hold a three-day rain. His eyes dart back and forth. He’s absolutely nuts. He cruises around on that bike, looking for stuff to steal. When a mitre-saw disappeared from my garage a few years ago, he was the first one I thought of. It might not have been him. It could have been somebody else. There are plenty of them, after all.

I guess I forgot to lock the garage.

His girlfriend left him and hooked up with a big coke-head. For a while there, back in the eighties, I would drive her to London so that she could visit him when he was in jail. She looked pretty good then, and I have to admit, my attraction to her felt kind of disloyal. 

There’s no doubt she would have been better off with me…such was my thinking.

After seeing her in recent years, I’m kind of glad that didn’t happen.

She dumped him when her mother died and there was some chance of inheritance…I guess she could see, even then, which way the wind was blowing. It wouldn’t have lasted very long, would it? A half a million bucks would have kept Zoomer and her going for about two, two and a half years…

There were times when I envied that guy—envied him. Shit, he had girlfriends, some of them not too bad looking, and at some point in my life, I was always alone. It was only when you went to their house, sat there and listened to them talk, when you figured it out.

Who else would have him?

No one in their right mind.

The women were as bad as he was.

No one was more impressed than I was, when Zoomer got a job. Predictably, it was the sort of job where no one really cared if you showed up hung over, called in sick, or stepped outside to smoke a quick doobie or two on your lunch hour. When the bosses went home at four-thirty, that’s when the beer magically appeared. Guys down there love their overtime, eh?

It was a shitty place to work—all kinds of resin, fibreglass, and fumes in there, and so I never applied there.

My buddy taught me how to boost a car stereo, open a car door with a coat hangar, how to shoplift, how to make rock cocaine from powder, all sorts of things really.

He’s still out there. He’s on the street, although I’ve seen him and one or two others coming and going from the homeless shelter. One wonders where he would find a landlord dumb enough to rent to him. The welfare claim is pretty much automatic, although the looking for work, and the job searches can’t be all that credible. I’ve never seen him wearing the orange vest and picking up cigarette butts downtown. It’s beneath his dignity, one would think. Why work when you can steal?

He doesn’t seem to have any teeth left.

Poor old Zoomer looks like sheer hell when you see him.

I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want him to know where I live. I don’t want him asking about my family.

I don’t want to come home one day and find that he’s cleaned me out, or if not him, then it would be somebody else.

At his age, one would think that he is beyond hope, beyond cure, beyond caring any longer what happens to him.

It’s probably true, too.

Was he ever a good man?

Not that I can really recall.

With that guy, it all started when he was about fourteen years old.

And I’m guilty too. Twenty years went by when I was just killing time, trying to stay drunk, or stoned, or just not bothering to try. I was trying to avoid responsibility for my life. Even then, I thought of writing books—I was a crashing bore on the subject, but it just seemed so unlikely.

It was just too hard, ladies and gentlemen.

I don’t care if you pity or condemn Zoomer, who eventually found the meth. It’s cheap, it gets you high, and it kills a lot of pain—that’s what I’m thinking.

And I’ll bet he’s got a lot of pain to kill. He’s got a whole, wasted lifetime of guilt and pain which he will never acknowledge outside of a rehab group therapy session, and probably not even then. He’s never been honest with himself, unless it was part of a ploy to gain sympathy—a ploy to beg, borrow or steal some more money.

Some of these guys are real good with the sob stories. Their dads are always there to bail them out of jail, too.

That must be an interesting conversation.

Eh?

A lot of that money must have come from his own parents.

There but for something—call it luck, call it determination, call it the grace of God if you must, go I—and I know that very well.

It is all too easy to let go and not give a fuck about anything anymore. Or anyone—and I can assure you that he did have a mother, a father, a sister and a brother.

When people don’t respect themselves, you can hardly expect them to respect anyone or anything else. That includes other people's property. It’s all the same to a meth-head.

He had a nice girlfriend, and he had some pretty good friends there for a while.

This is his fate—and that’s okay with me as long as it’s okay with him.

And if you don’t want to hear about my books and stories, that’s okay too.

I don’t need him any more than I need you.

Maybe that’s the difference.

Maybe the poor guy never got pissed off at himself.

Maybe the poor guy never asked the question.

Maybe he never looked inside of himself and found something there that was worthwhile.

Maybe that guy never found any guts.

But I did. I did, ladies and gentlemen. In that sense, even an atheist can be truly blessed.

And I can tell you that there is something better than this.

I will keep going until I find it.

As for you guys, you can do what you want.

It’s not like I give a fucking shit. I got my shit together, it took a while, but it did happen.

No one is going to take that away from me.

END

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addictive_personality