What a Legal Pot Economy Would Look Like? video: The Flower http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMM_T_PJ0Rs 3:35 August 10, 2010 - Sometimes a cartoon can be worth 1000 words. ... or even more than 100,000. Haik Hoisington's 'Flower' video has hit a nerve and has gone viral on the Internet. The Flower was released by the online news service AlterNet on July 29 - and in just 5 days has been viewed more than 175,000 times. This fall Californians will go the polls with a chance to make history. They will be able to cast a vote to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol or cigarettes. California's Proposition 19 is one of many similar initiatives cropping up on state ballots across the country. Whether it's calls for decriminalization or medical marijuana the end of cannabis prohibition has never seemed closer. In this short animated parable, "The Flower", award winning artist Haik Hoisington contrasts a legal marijuana economy with an illegal one, to show how everyone stands to benefit from ending the war on weed. "The Flower" contrasts a utopian society that freely farms and consumes a pleasure giving flower with a society where the same flower is illegal and its consumption is prohibited. The animation is a meditation on the social and economic costs of marijuana prohibition. ----- commentary: It isn't "freely farms and consumes" if "tax[ed] and regulate[d ...] like alcohol or cigarettes." Lose excise taxation, already! (Doesn't mean no charge for leases and severance of federal territory, such as offshore minerals/oil, flight paths, exclusive interstate use of electromagnetic spectrum, etc.) Only the oppressors dread the direct Tax. And that means apportioned (State Rate Tax), not the feral government (and California) extorting tax directly from individual people. Quit pandering to the taxers and commissars, and demand free access to (and right not to have imposed on oneself) all plants God gave. Okay; "like alcohol or cigarettes." Don't tax, block access to, or subsidise those, either. (Adieu, BATFE, CIA, DEA and IRS!) Quoting Jeffery J. Smith, President, Forum on Geonomics: http://www.progress.org/ Land Rights course: http://www.course.earthrights.net/ Share Earth's worth to prosper and conserve. The Flower http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMM_T_PJ0Rs http://hempnews.tv/2010/08/10/watch-what-a-legal-pot-economy-would-look-like/ (Also embedded at http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=31783 ) ===== Judge Gray: U.S. Drug Policy / America's Biggest Issue? - video http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/HempMerc/message/71 ------------------------------------
