The legalization “movement” is crying out for someone to point the staff toward the Promised Land. Someone like Dr. Martin Luther King. If herbal rights proponents hope for legalization anytime soon, they would do well to replicate the tactics of individuals and movements that persevered through tremendous struggles to win their freedom.

You may have noticed that this site has been experiencing various “irregularities.” Think “open the pod bay door, HAL.” Our computer systems have displayed signs of … confusion. I know that it’s been hard to contact us, post comments, or search for articles you could easily find a few months ago. Some browsers have even displayed virus warnings. What is going on?

If Denver CBS4 investigator Rick Sallinger is correct, “No Dispensaries Within 1,000 Feet of a School,” a reality show introduced in California which depicts US Attorneys “weeding out” pot businesses, is going on the road. And that road leads directly to the state where John Denver famously rhymed “Colorado rocky mountain high” with “I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky.”

After the recent crackdown on California dispensaries, many of you are concerned if similar disruptions can or will happen here in Colorado. The short answer to “can it” happen is “yes.” The longer answer to “will it” happen is that similar hostilities don’t appear imminent in Colorado … but selling medical marijuana remains the single riskiest business in America.

You know you’re in a world of hurt when US Attorneys from a state teetering on the brink of bankruptcy deem stamping out pot cotton candy Action Item #1. However, not every DEA Special Agent is on the warpath …

Every time Bruce Vanaman crosses state lines for treatment, his daily cannatherapy is thrown out of whack. Products that he knows are effective, products he’s dependent upon to mitigate the stress of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, will be unavailable to him in the state that he travels to. His Colorado red card will be useless in fifteen out of the sixteen medical marijuana states. Unable to follow his usual regimen, Bruce will be forced to experiment with untested medibles — manufactured through who-knows-what extraction methods. If that’s not sufficiently challenging, Bruce is subject to arrest if he’s apprehended transporting the meds he’s used to out of Colorado. That puts him at severe risk — not exactly where you want to find yourself if you’re on death’s doorstep and you have a choice. Bruce has a choice. You, too have a choice. But it’s not what you think.

Besides deploying an army of lobbyists to sabotage any and all efforts to reschedule cannabis as a Schedule One drug, Big Pharma also excels at a practice the medical marijuana industry might actually want to adopt — it dispenses its often lethal and always popular concoctions in uniform doses.

But the townsfolk of remote Craig, Colorado have another idea what they want their uniform doses of.

The DEA employs over 10,800 people, including 5,500 “special agents.” It maintains buildings and training facilities throughout the USA — 226 Domestic Offices in 21 Divisions to be exact, and all over the globe, with 83 foreign offices in 63 countries. So, with about 11,000 employees to keep busy, and $2.4 billion allocated toward that end, when the DEA huffs and puffs that it doesn’t necessarily recognize every state’s oddball medical marijuana policy, it can blow that house down.

Wouldn’t you know it, when I’d finally freed up time to deconstruct The Ohio Medical Cannabis Act of 2012 [OMCA2012], Grohio Attorney General Mike DeWine had beat me to it. Above and beyond the litany of “content flaws” DeWine found before summarily rejecting the petition, its language was clumsy, amateurish, and written in a self-congratulatory tone. That contributed mightily to its demise.

Two short months ago, I was really rolling, brainpower set on ten, cranking out Ten Reasons Why Medical Marijuana is Cannabis Commerce’s Ball and Chain. I was in the flow, relishing my freshly minted persona as medical marijuana’s most vocal critic. Then “real life” intervened.

Highly-compensated Cannabis Commerce corporate psychologists convinced me that no one can resist a headline starting with the hypnotic phrase, “Ten Reasons Why.” Using all my power, all my skill, I somehow managed to shoehorn the many ways MMJ mangles cannabis commerce into ten distinct parts. It wasn’t easy. However, as I looked longer and closer, sitting on the additional collateral damage that was smacking me right between the eyes became an impossibility. One particular aftereffect of fixating on MMJ was just too toxic to suppress.

“Winning” [the iron medal] limited medical marijuana initiatives invites legislators into a vicious cycle of creating, editing, and deleting whatever proposition or referendum you voted for after the fact. Voting for MMJ — as opposed to repealing MJ prohibition — insures endless regulatory skirmishes will waste taxpayers’ money until the end of days. The casualties from said skirmishes are legitimate MMJ business owners forced out on the street by dynamic laws.