Washington passed a law to address "Social Equity" which aims to compensate for the harm done to neighborhoods and people especially damaged by the War on Drugs. In other states this involves assuring that victims can get cannabis licenses, past criminal records are expunged, and those in prison for now-legal offenses are released. The concept was not invented until well after WA and Colorado legalized, so they have to catch up. About a year...
I'm on US101. Those are long drives through half the state from the desert to the clouds near the ocean. But now it's a bunch of short hops northward until I hit Chimacum, likely taking 6 weeks or so. I'll sit in towns and fairgrounds and ports and such waiting out rain storms, moving when the weather and views are good. I'm in the Sonoma County Fairgrounds RV park which is always interesting. There are a lot of construction folk here, probably...
I got into the Fantasy Springs Casino lot in a stiff wind with a lot of blowing dust, glad to be off the road. Today I sat to let the winds die down. This was a good chance to check out the new Harborside pot store in Desert Hot Springs. They are particularly proud of their drive-through window though it's not the first in the country. Harborside is a famous old medical marijuana dispensary which started in Oakland and earned it's fame through...
I destroyed my awning several years ago and didn't miss it at all. Then I got the bug to fix up my rv and included replacing it as part of the project. I arranged to meet ShadePro at Quartzsite for measurements and such, and after a few days they showed up with the awning. Unfortunately the guy doing the measuring skipped a step and different parts were required. So we met in Yuma today and the outfit got it installed in no time. Tomorrow I...
New Mexico gave a shot at passing a legalization/regulation bill through the legislature during a 30-day session. It failed to pass. The consensus is that it's failure was due to the sponsor not distributing copies of the bill quickly enough, which meant only a few of the lawmakers had time to read the actual bill. Not to mention propose and vote on amendments. But, given the short session it was unlikely to get through the process anyway....
People complain about the high prices for legal marijuana in California, usually blaming high taxes. Besides the fact that CA's taxes are roughly in the middle of legal states, have you ever heard that CA has lowered taxes on anything? CA's problem is extremely high licensing, permitting, and other start-up costs, not taxes. I don't see a relationship between a state's tax rates and the prices paid: StateExcise tax (%)Sales tax(%)Price (3.5g...
I was happy to get out of Deming. Mainly because I was tired of the cold. But I'm somewhere warm now, planning on maybe a week here. The crowds are thinned out now so it will be easy to get around town.
Late last night the Senate Judiciary Committee killed the legalization bill, despite overwhelming support in both political and non-political groups. Reasons given were that the bill didn't do enough to "keep cannabis out of the hands of children" and "didn't do enough to address impaired driving". The NM bill was about as thorough and proven on these issues as any state in the union, and was as comprehensive as current experience elsewhere...
I was really annoyed yesterday when the shop wouldn't let me take my rig because of the weather. I had to find another motel room. But, when I got up this morning my truck had 5 inches of snow on it. Soon, the sun came out and there was water everywhere. I was glad they insisted I leave it indoors until today. I am very happy with the results. They took everything off the roof, and scraped the rubber coating off down to bare wood. In spite of...