Health & Fitness
Is there a State Store in Hempfield, Pennsylvania?
Isn't it kinda dumb to kill the State Store System for Booze now when in a couple of years we'll need it for pot?
Pennsylvania has been having a debate within itself about the State Liquor Control Board (LCB). Many free market people want to do away with this system from the post-depression as archaic or philosophically unpalatable. For these folks, allowing the government to do anything is evil.
A recent ad on the radio contained a solid argument that we need to keep the LCB. Evidently Pennsylvania is last in the country in booze related fatalities. So I guess the state, with its LCB infrastructure is actually doing something right. Really what the LCB does is safely distribute consumer based legally controlled substances to consumers who want a mind altering experience.
Since we have an All-GOP Government in PA right now, of course the LCB is up for dismantlement. So I started thinking about alternative reasons to keep this institution alive. I sat down to have some milk and brownies and it hit me like an old Cheech and Chong movie! We just need to wait a little bit longer for the pot laws across the country to catch up with the reality of our national population. The LCB is the perfect avenue for the state to distribute pot.
You walk into the State Store and are greeted with wines on one side, distilled spirits in the middle aisles and a cordoned off area with grass and nachos in the back.
Seriously, I cannot see how pot will be illegal in 10 years. The Federal Government is close waving the white flag on weed. The populations most uptight about the stuff are dying off.
It is fair to state that pot is no longer an entrance drug to harder drugs, but to the penal system. Enough of our population and culture has embraced pot to place at risk the general respect for the laws of our society. (Once you get up the will and courage to break laws about pot then other laws are more easily broken.)
I am not a necessarily a proponent of killing the war on drugs, but you have to wonder what are we doing here? We have created a penal system overflowing with people. Eventually the ripple effect of having so many people in jail will cause the families of those incarcerated to activate for lawmakers who will pass laws that more accurately reflect the will of the people – and help get their kin out of jail – and into treatment programs.
Once that hemp-woven white flag goes up by the Federal Government, there will be a need to distribute, regulate, and yes, tax weed in the State of Pennsylvania. The LCB is the perfect mechanism to do this work. Why re-invent the wheel when we already have it?
