Marie Antoinette declared about the peasants: Let them eat cake.
Berkley City Council declares: Let them get high.
Hat tip Boston Bob
California city mandates free medical marijuana for low-income residents
Weed welfare?
That’s what the Berkeley City Council in California has unanimously approved, ordering medical marijuana dispensaries to donate 2 percent of their stash to patients making less than $32,000 a year.
The new welfare program in the liberal-leaning city is set to launch in August 2015.
The ordinance, which passed in August and is the first of its kind in the country, comes at a time when several states are debating how to handle a growing movement to legalize marijuana for both medical and recreational use.
But Berkeley’s decision to effectively order weed redistribution is prompting a vocal backlash.
Bishop Ron Allen, a former addict and head of the International Faith Based Coalition, told Fox News he doesn’t understand why the California city would want to dump pot on the impoverished.
“It’s ludicrous, over-the-top madness,” Allen said. “Why would Berkeley City Council want to keep their poverty-stricken under-served high, in poverty and lethargic?”
John Lovell, a lobbyist for the California Narcotic Officers’ Association, agrees.
“Instead of taking steps to help the most economically vulnerable residents get out of that state, the city has said, ‘Let’s just get everybody high,’” Lovell told The New York Times.
But others, like Mason Tvert, director of communications at the Marijuana Policy Project, say it’s a community program.
Tvert told Fox News that the decision to provide the drug to some of its low-income residents is up to the community.
“So it’s a matter of the democratic process, people following the state’s laws, and this law appears to accommodate both of those,” he said.
California was the first state to legalize medical marijuana nearly 20 years ago.
California dispensaries are prohibited by law from turning a profit. But some places have been giving pot away to patients who couldn’t pay for years.
One of Berkeley’s largest dispensaries, Berkeley Patients Group, has been doing it for a decade, The New York Times reports. One recipient, Arnie Passman, a poet and activist, said he’s couldn’t remember exactly how long he had been given medical marijuana or why.
“It could be for my allergies, or my arthritis — you know what happens to us folks: We forget,” Passman, 78, told the newspaper.
Totally bitchin’ dude…..like, awesome.
The slope grows more slippery each and every day. John
Phoebe Cates……ahhhhhhh…….sorry, uh, hold on, wait a second…..
She married…..Kevin Cline? And still is? Way to go Kev!
Let’s get just ONE thing straight.
Marie Antoinette NEVER said this, and the fact that she never said this, or anything else so insensitive and unsympathetic, is well-documented. This remark was attributed to her
AFTER she had considerably cleaned up her act after the extravagance of her youth before age 27, and had become extremely frugal. She gave copiously to charities every year, and had her children give their Christmas gifts to poor children. She adopted and raised several poor children, and hired young women from ordinary backgrounds for very privileged jobs on her hobby farm, which infuriated powerful courtiers who thought they themselves should be given these cushy, no-work jobs that came with access to the Queen.
Never was anyone so maligned by history, who did less to deserve it. Can we forgive a kid who was shunted into an arranged marriage and shipped to a strange country at age 15, for being a little wild with money at age 19-25 when she had never been educated in economic matters? She committed some sins, mainly scoring jobs for undeserving friends, but that’s about the worst offense she committed. Let the poor woman rest in peace.
Forgive grammatical lapse.. I meant “never has anyone BEEN so maligned…”
So, once again the small biz guy is being raped under the guise of helping someone.
Does California force Apple to give 2% of their iPhones to the underprivileged?
Does Facebook give 2% of their advertising revenue to their poor customers?
Does fucking Tesla have to give 2% of their sales to the needy?
How about Pfizer? Do they HAVE to give 2%?
This country sucks more every single day. The reason this theft won’t be stopped is because there are still enough people that believe God messed up when he created pot, AND that they have the right to demand controls on other humans.
There was nothing about Berkely paying for the product. They probably will run afoul of the takings clause the former US Constitution.
TE, of COURSE only small businesses have to submit to being raped and plundered for the benefit of the “people”.
When will our population realize that every state-funded or state-mandated “gimme” is ultimately paid for by the people who can least afford it, and that the burden of regulation was meant to eliminate the competition of small and upstart businesses?
If indeed large concerns ARE forced to give any part of their profits or products to the ‘po, they will demand, and get, an offsetting gift such as a major tax exemption designed especially for them but which smaller concerns cannot qualify, or an outright subsidy funded by the taxpayers, as the big barn stores have for years.
As my mother told me when I was a young girl, nobody GIVES anybody anything, and you will always end up paying for your “gifts” one way or the other, so make sure you know the true price upfront. This “gift” to medical marijuana users will only mean higher prices, higher taxes, and lost jobs and opportunity for everyone else.
@Chicago says, “…When will our population realize that every state-funded or state-mandated “gimme” is ultimately paid for by the people who can least afford it, and that the burden of regulation was meant to eliminate the competition of small and upstart businesses? …”
Have past nevah’, my friend.
Never. The “strikes” (which are really paid-for union agitators, not actually fast food workers) today is proof of that.
Those fools are going to get what they want. Fewer jobs, more hours to survive AND cut of the dole. That is going to work out PHENOMENALLY well for them.
Tools. The entire country is filled to the gills with non-thinking, consumer, tools.
I find it laughable that Bishop Ron Allen thinks the FSA are “under-served”! They want for nothing except apparently, for weed. I think Bishop Allen is smoking too much weed.
@IS, if Bishop Allen is the head of a urban, black, church, nearly 100% of his salary, ‘er church’s tithes, comes from the FSA. Same can be said of non-black leaders in this nation’s rural/formerly farm country.
Of course someone that is relying on the poorest of the poor to give him cash would think his flock is under-served.
I’ve always found it both outrageous, and soul-suckingly disgusting, the level of ghetto fabulous the preachers of De’toilet are. There flocks are made up of – mainly – elderly women, all either subsisting on SS, or on SSDI, or with pensions (and the older they are, the less those pensions and SS are), whom are continuously giving money to their churches so that the church leaders can wear $1000 suits, $500 fedoras, $500 shoes and drive $50k Escalades.
Then these hypocritical peace of shit “leaders” take their untaxed, ill-gotten, gains and flood the countryside pushing the “gimme” and victim mentality.
I wonder what Jesus would have thought/does think about people that CHOOSE to live off others while contributing nothing? Or the people that live large while taking from people that are suffering? Tithing of their grammas’ notwithstanding.
Shit like this makes me think, “great freaking job Johnson” and “I hope he is rotting in hell.”
I wonder if the bakery’s in the area will be required to supply the low income folks with munchies to go with their dope .
I had a conversation with a co-worker who felt every business should furnish every worker with a living wage and that they should be forced to increase wages as their profits increased. He’s 20 years younger than me….crap…we truly are doomed !