« The Elephant in the Living Room: America's huge pot market | Main | Grim Raich Aftermath »
January 05, 2006
An Interesting New Site
Because I can only work on the blog during bits of time stolen from other activities and- like everyone else- have been caught up in the Holidaze, it's been a while since the last entry. In it, I talked about the unknown- but enormous- size of America's illegal pot market, which only started growing to its present dimensions AFTER Richard Nixon declared a 'war on drugs' during his first term. Although impossible to measure precisely, evidence of the market's enormous growth can be gleaned from indirect sources: the estimated number of plants being grown continues to increase ; cannabis arrests, which now outnumber all others , have become the engine which maintains the world's largest prison population , and the market's dollar value, although the least verifiable measure of all, is conceded to be billions of dollars in every state.
I'm still working on the promised tabulation of my applicants' ages; but in the meantime, I want to call attention to a web site I just discovered. It's easily the biggest single compilation of information on California's providers of medical cannabis and related services I've ever seen. In the short time I've had to explore some of its many links, I've found the URLs are generally up-to-date and work well. Among the various activist organizations and medical providers listed are several I have serious disagreements with in terms of their concepts of, and approaches to, 'medical' use. However, I don't regard the listings as a blanket endorsement, but rather as further evidence that there is an enormous amount of pent-up interest in a phenomenon - the contemporary American use of cannabis- which deserves far more intelligent interest and study than has ever been possible under an absurd policy and the repressive bureaucracies enforcing it.
I've had some brief email correspondence with the author who is very responsive and also has an understandable basis for his own interest. I'm calling attention to his site primarily because it so dramatically reflects the growing interest in medical use stimulated by Proposition 215 despite efforts of law enforcement to stifle distribution and the media's consistently terrible job of reporting news about it.
Of course, I'd be less than candid if I didn't also admit to a certain pride at his choice of this fledgling effort as "blog of the year."
Tom O'Connell MD
Posted by tjeffo at January 5, 2006 06:59 PM