11 February 2022

Around 8:30 am CST

 

Per digest last night –

 

• Influenced by Southern Women’s Temperance Union

• “Moral turpitude” and alcohol consumption

• Cultivation of agricultural product (mint) with multiple potential uses, but appropriated for disproportionate intoxication

  • Potential medicinal or culinary, but the “muddling” with sugar helps make the alcohol more palatable and hence encourages increased consumption

• “Trampling of fields”

 

– Compare with “legalization of marijuana”

• Justifications regarding “harm reduction” versus “gateway drug,” however, like “mint” is often a prelude or come down or supplement to other more dangerous drugs

• Acquisition and consumption, both logistical or cultural, on streets of Dallas has not changed EXCEPT it has become more brazen

  • Ie., more public use and sales/distribution

  • Paraphernalia for smoking may be easier to access legally (debatable) but illegal marijuana acquisition and consumption/distribution appears same

• Recall analyses of “kush” in Houston: Theory – Calling it “incense” and mixing chemicals that evoke associations/memories of experiences with incense (ie., ritual; meditation) both disturbs the perceptivity of others who smell someone smoking it AND alters the perception of smoker by associating OTHER smells like the scent of kush with kush smoking; this has effect of blurring lines of perceptivity/response to marijuana smoking WHILE also normalizing public consumption of much more dangerous “drugs” like kush akin to marijuana and representations of its “harmlessness”

• Much more crack smoking and meth smoking, including in public places (ie., on the train; at train stops) is appearing now then in time before COVID-19

• Additionally, normalization of discussions regarding “marijuana” with “health care providers” (ie., COVID-19 test administrators at social services) or people in service networks (including staff, even security staff, at service providers) blurs lines of appropriate behaviors between patients/clients and providers

• Law enforcement responses to public consumption and even sale of illegal marijuana calls into question other actions by law enforcement, including in their responses – or lack of responses – to other reported crimes; how do video cameras at places where such consumption/distribution impact police performance; do police engage permissibility of illegal marijuana to entrap or “up-leverage risk” associated with other drugs/crime?

 

– Questions: I anticipate the answer to the following questions is “no”:

1. Has legalized marijuana decreased arrests of people of color for other harder drugs (civil rights argument for decriminalization due to disproportionate impact of arrest and sentencing on people of color and their communities)?

2. Has legalized marijuana improved the health status of people of color or has it increased their access to other health care (health care as a human right)?

3. Has legalized marijuana decreased crime of other sort – including prostitution, theft, arms trafficking, violent crime – in urban communities previously understood as disproportionately subject to crime (public safety and criminal justice reform as well as infiltration and neutralization of other forms of political organizing in communities)?

4. Has legalized marijuana supported spiritual or religious practices that had previously been marginalized WITHOUT increasing risk or propensity for engagement in or through other kinds of crime? Has it made them “safe” or “less harmful” (indigenous rights and First Amendment rights to freedom of religion)?

5. Have people of color benefited substantially from the entrepreneurship of legalized marijuana? Do more people of color own farmland/facilities used for cultivation? Do more people of color own CBD oil or legal cannabis dispensaries (economic justice)?

6. Has legalized marijuana improved other conditions of disrepair or resource access to communities of people of color – specifically environmental safety based on detoxification of land, repair of facilities, or safe water access (environmental justice and efforts to fight urban flight or gentrification)?

 

– Then there’s the matter of the cultural supplantation via legalized marijuana as a substitute for other political rights. Besides the “hybridization” culture around specialty cultivation (which I contend has substantial implications when evaluated from the perspective of “health care”) there is the “gateway” theory. Has the legalization of this previously illicit and illegal item AND activity facilitated a cultural normalization to violations of mandatory policies and laws in other areas due to the understanding that political resources have already been concentrated into precedent and movements for normalization or legalization of crime?

• The example considered last night referred to 2016 legislative changes pending in the California Legislature regarding qualifications for personnel at a nuclear power plant [this is in context of discovery of processes connected to editing electronic copyright/patent claims using different colored fonts and the manner in which the electronic versions of legislative changes proposed for legislation in California are presented to the public]. The text has been crossed out regarding mandatory drug testing for marijuana and replaced with other provisions not directly related to employee qualification. Why would not a nuclear power plant want to require personnel to be held to a zero tolerance standard around illegal drug use? If somehow marijuana consumption was considered part of a “nuclear paradigm” that was never disclosed. Additionally, there is the responsibility regarding health care for employees and safety of worker biodata or health information made available to others, including commercially, in manners that might impact worker safety. The rescission of a drug testing policy belies OTHER lapses in standards maintenance and enforcement.

 

– The next point gets to access to individual biodata or health information for commercial purposes, including by or for use by weapons companies of the petrochem sector. In what manners is this biodata considered “equity,” including equity that other people expect to be made available for their compensation? Are people being facilitated in expecting to be compensated through illegal acquisition of other people’s equity in order to use it for other crimes with an understanding that dispossessing certain political organizations, communities, or leadership of equity impacts their ability to engage political efforts to legalize the crimes they are currently committing? This includes drug use.

• Early COVID-19 responses regarding health care providers discussing how what was being done was against policy or procedure

• Responses regarding local public health authorities and demands, including representations of lack of preparedness, despite federal mandates to have prevention and preparedness plans in place with personnel trained

• Admonition that needed supplies were lacking, despite several Executive Orders on response to quarantinable respiratory diseases and strategic national stockpiles specific for such purpose

• Lax policies on requirements regarding qualifications around COVID-19 testing and later vaccinations, including:

  • Authorization to give immunizations at local drug stores (summer 2020) including to children

  • Waivers on appropriate certification and supervision for health care practitioners in training/education programs or facilities (ie., Abbott’s announcement in March 2020 until now)

 

– Did earlier lapses in appropriate policy around access to “health care treatment,” including regarding access to and mandated consumption of psychotropic medications, enculturate people into willful and knowing violations of policy at one level, eliciting their compliance or acquiescence based on appeals to their self-interest into engaging illegal activity, so as to proliferate this process at increasing levels or risk later on?

• The argument of “marijuana” as a “dangerous drug” was based, in part, upon this premise. There is also the implications of the DIRECT impact of legalizing marijuana on the “COVID-19” and “post-COVID-19” context based on what happened thus far:

  • Has legalized marijuana impacted consumption of marijuana BY health care providers, including a) during response to COVID-19 and b) in manners that aid and abet abuse of other drugs, including drugs health care providers can acquire by prescription?

  • Has refusal to respond to the COVID-19 relief measures tracking consumer spending and allowing that consumer data to be made commercially available to others correlated with “consumer data” regarding health care supplies and/or medication, whether OTC or by prescription?

  • Is there an exception to this commercialization for health care providers?

  • Would evaluation of health care provider consumer data reveal their “compensation” has been used for marijuana or CBD oil products, or other drugs, including drugs that use prescription medications as component materials?

  • Is there evidence that drug abuse has been normalized as an effort to compel acquiescence to other violations of policy regarding health care provisions? Has it been used as a recruitment strategy?

  • What correlations are there between the multi-trillion dollar CBD oil “venture capital” sector and those who had already used “venture capital” strategies in regards to social services access?

 

– One needs to consider if the manner of reconsidering “risk” associated with health care provision, including in association with access to other social services (like homeless and domestic violence shelters) has been represented or misrepresented relative to other risks much more harmful and how this affects the full spectrum of the system. Did legalizing marijuana encourage other “harmful” activities by large-scale investors – including charitable or philanthropic investors – including in manners that obscure blatantly illegal financial activities with long-term consequences?

• For instance: recent Shell Oil reports on expected profits (after 2017 efforts were obstructed and tranches [of] sales from 2018-2019 not accounted for while SEC records were altered; Exxon Mobil reports from Fall 2021; State of Texas “anticipated income” reported Autumn 2021 (“$25 billion surplus expected”); Goldman Sachs earnings for third quarter, Autumn 2021, after $3.9 billion fine payout to Malaysia; etc.) and OTHER changes, including ex post facto changes at Office of Comptroller of Currency and Federal Reserve.

 

– Then, consider “retail” and “distribution” as components of “worker safety.”

 

 9:21 am CST

11 Feb 2022

[signed] Charity Colleen Crouse

 

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Finished typing at 11:01 am CST on Feb. 11, 2022

Proofread by 11:09 am CST

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POSTED at 11:18 am CST

Feb. 11, 2022