Berley

Republican presidential candidates, including Trump, are suggesting military action against the Mexican cartels. A Sunday morning news show, and I verified it via the National Institutes of Health, stated 70,601 people died of fentanyl overdoses in 2021.

Do you agree we finally need to control both the border and cartels living across it?

But then I recall the local association the city council condones. The LGBMCA. The La Grande Black Market Cannabis Association.

It is as lawless as the cartels. Nobody sees it. Nobody taxes it. Nobody controls it.

A few years back the city council voted 5-1 to allow the citizens to vote on legalizing the sale of recreational cannabis in town. The next meeting they flipped 1-5 against the citizen vote.

Let’s compare LGBMCA to the legalized market outside of La Grande.

When marijuana is planted by a legal state-licensed grower it is tagged and reported electronically and in real-time to the state of Oregon via the Metrc system.

When it is harvested that tagged plant is tested by a third party to ensure it is mold, bug, chemical and fentanyl free.

The tested plant is then sold and transferred in the Metrc system to a dispensary. When that tagged marijuana is sold at the dispensary to the consumer it is reported back to the Oregon Metrc system and that tag is closed. The industry refers to this process as “Track and Trace” or “Seed to Sale.”

Are you also aware that a dispensary has state-mandated security cameras throughout on both the retail floor and in the back office where product is stored? The state monitors those cameras religiously and they have shut down dispensaries violating state laws.

The state of Oregon also requires both the dispensaries and their owners to prove they have filed both their business and personal income tax returns, including that they have paid or on a payment plan. Otherwise — no exceptions — you lose your retail license.

These are amazing controls. Did you know this?

I know because I am a CPA and the state informs me via newsletters of how the world works where law and order exists outside of La Grande.

How do the LGBMCA cannabis black-market controls operate? First, the city council members give carte blanche to the black market and turn their heads the other way.

The politicians then give you, the ones living in denial, the political line, “not in our town,” to make you believe that reefer will not be sold here.

The truth is that a criminal grows it here. The criminal then sells it to a local drug dealer who also buys from the cartels.

This drug dealer may lace it with fentanyl. The consumer, being you, your friends or your family or members of your personal organized local groups buys this untested stuff all day, every day, without controls in a back alley off of Washington Avenue.

No cameras, no tags, no track and trace, no testing and no taxes — just a lawless market.

Cannabis, alcohol, et al., has been around thousands of years, and it will be around another million years.

The denial that marijuana exists locally because you convinced the city council to change their vote to 1-5 is delusional.

This delusion that we live in some utopia free of outside influences and that the black market does not exist here is no longer a viable solution. The old way of anti-everything and cancel-everything is failed thinking.

One of the arguments to stay in denial I will head off now. Cannabis is a gateway drug.

It is very true here because the local criminal drug dealer, an incredible salesperson, likely has a candy store of addictive drugs to offer you, your friends and your family.

What is the argument for how many people died of marijuana in 2021? Research it for yourself.

In this socialist La Grande city council members argued in response to my article last month in which I claimed that the free market doesn’t work here, yet they clearly condone the black market.

An oxymoron of the American way of life.

Today, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens are losing because the city council blocks short-term rentals and also taxes your largest asset, your home, to give to the 1% via the Urban Renewal Agency.

Yet, the city-council-sponsored, non-taxpaying, cartel-like, lawless LGBMCA criminals and Mexican cartels are winning!

There is one solution. Enact and enforce the law and order that our legal system has established to control the cannabis industry in La Grande.

And allow the free markets to work for law-abiding taxpayers. Then our house may be in order.

Do you have a point you’d like to make or an issue you feel strongly about? Submit a letter to the editor or a guest column.