Guest editorials are the opinions of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Examiner.
By TOM STEPHENS
Examiner Contributor
The Bellefontaine City Council will soon consider implementing a permanent ban on the sale of adult-use, recreational marijuana with in the city limits.
Good for them.
Certainly the next logical step would be for the Council go after the real heavy-hitter dealers – cartels, pushers and small-timers alike – who have have been dumping their dope on us, especially our children, for lo these many years.
It’s the Number One drug of abuse United States. Second place is a par-5 down the list, not even close. More people enthusiastically use this powerful psychoactive drug in the U.S per day than use medications prescribed by physicians. The CDC estimates that 92 percent of Americans use this potent and addictive drug on a daily basis.
We are of course talking about caffeine.
You can buy a cup of drug-packed joe at every restaurant, bodega, convenience store, gas station, food truck, saloon, fast-food place, and cafe in the city, indeed in any city in the U.S, outside Utah. Few American homes are not equipped with at least one machine that dispenses coffee, and not that pansy decaf stuff either. Caffeine can be found in most popular soft drinks and is what gives you “wings” in the heavily-advertised elixir that can legally be purchased right here in Logan County by any a third-grader with a government-issued food card.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I really don’t want to see the stimulant go. I drink enough caffeine-rich Dr Pepper that when I kick the bucket, sales of the my beloved beverage are likely to drop 2 to 3 percent nationwide. As for java, I am in full agreement with the reaction of Queen Elizabeth I on the occasion of her first taste of this strange brew called koffie that was making serious inroads in Northern Europe in her day. She took a magisterial slug, promptly spat it in the fireplace, told everyone within earshot that it wasn’t fit to wash the pigs in and immediately sent for a pint or six of honest English beer. God save the Queen.
There is no hard data on the number of true caffeine addicts in the United States, probably because 92 percent of those who conduct such studies are all hopped up on caffeine.
But there is a really easy way to find out if you are one. Quit your intake of anything that contains even an iota of caffeine for one week, starting tomorrow morning. Cold turkey, baby. Should you find yourself screaming at the dog for being such a sloppy drinker or are unable to find the energy to crawl out of bed and make your 15-minute commute to work, you just may be on the far side of that caffeine addiction Bell curve.
Members of city and village councils here in Deep Red America (not just Bellefontaine) think they are playing to their base by expressing their support for bans on pot sales, often citing that the marijuana market is directed at children, which would be a great argument if it were true. Try and squeeze a 19-year-old into a dispensary Michigan or Nevada. Good luck. In some states, those who are underage and on the premises of dispensary can be subject to a trespassing citation. Here in Ohio, Junior can grab you a 12-pack of that wussy light beer you drink out of the cooler while you check your Keno tickets for winners.
But by repeating the prevarication that by banning dispensaries is “protecting the children” – whether they believe it of not – is their only assertion, the lone peg legislators can hang their hat on. They have no other argument. They can always feel morally superior when they vote to implement bans on the sales of “dope,” then go right home and raise a nice pilsner, single-malt or latte.
Take note that our legislators moral misgivings and pearl clutching in worrying about “the kiddos” comes to a full stop at marijuana, because its common knowledge that the alcohol, tobacco and gambling interests would never stoop so low to market their wares to anyone under the age of 21. Right?
Well…
At the gas station I frequent, payment for my purchases takes place between two full racks – on my right dozens of bottles of child-sized coconut-, lemonade-, cinnamon-, and vanilla-favored bottles of 21% ABV shooters; on my left a plastic behemoth full of thousands of dollars of state-owned scratchy lottery tickets that feature cartoon imprints of, depending on the time of the year, Valentine’s hearts, the Easter Bunny, Uncle Sam, jack-o-lanterns, Thanksgiving turkeys, and as of this past Christmas, one with Will Ferrell dressed as an elf. And refills for vapes are within easy reach. Our legislators are fine with Bubble Gum Rum, blueberry-favored vapes and a state-sponsored numbers racket, but draw the line with weed. Interesting take.
The Bellefontaine City Council didn’t say boo when a tobacconist recently opened for business at the southwest corner of the city’s busiest intersection. The CDC says that tobacco was directly responsible for almost 500,000 deaths in the U.S. last year.
Alcohol licenses are a dime a dozen in Bellefontaine. Off the top of my head, I can count about a over 10 stores on Main Street alone where one can carry-out or pick-up a 12-pack of that sissy light beer you drink. Alcohol accounted for 178,000 deaths and 4.2 million ER visits in the U.S. last year, including hundreds of children – middle-schoolers for crying out loud – with alcohol poisoning. Were I a betting man (which is legal!), I’d lay odds that healthy majority of those alcohol poisoning cases involved some kind of cotton candy-flavored spirit and not Johnnie Walker Black.
A recent study estimated that there are about 5 million compulsive gamblers in the U.S. (roughly 1.5 percent of the population), but there is no firm data on how many homes and businesses were lost in the wake gambling debts, legal or otherwise, how many people ruined, how many families shattered.
Yet these harmful and arguably morally-questionable products are readily available, and no one – or at least no one on Council, so it would seem – has any objections.
The path to the criminalization of marijuana in the U.S. borders on farce, and is too bizarre to be fiction, but that’s a story for another day.
There is no Biblical injunction against using marijuana, quite the opposite (Gen. 1:29). Marijuana been part of homo sapiens pharmacopeia for 10,000 years. It has been clinically proven to be efficacious medicine for a wide variety of ailments, an argument that can’t be made for heavy-duty painkillers or sedatives, which are readily available at every pharmacy in the city. As of this writing, no ordinances or resolutions have been introduced to the Bellefontaine City Council to ban the sale of opiates or benzodiazepines in the city. Those who have prescriptions for marijuana have to take their business out of town.
That being said, there is a small but significant minority of certain people in the community who are strongly in favor of the ban, these being the people who are selling half-ounce bags of smoke out of their trunk, as well the cartels who supply them. Local growers are catching up, but a lot of money spent on weed in Logan County goes back to the cartels who are smuggling it in by the truckload.
It’s Econ 101: In a free society, when there is a demand, there will be a supply. Period. There is a market in Bellefontaine and Logan County for marijuana. Banning dispensaries in the city will not change this in the least. A ban merely inconveniences those who use marijuana as medicine and will positively benefits people who are willing to break, or at least skirt, the law. Should the moratorium be implemented, marijuana will continue to be smuggled, grown, sold and smoked in Bellefontaine. No taxes will be collected, no age limits observed (dealers don’t check IDs), no weight cutoffs imposed.
Do I think that should they allow a dispensary or two in Bellefontaine that we’ll soon paving the streets with gold and our taxes will fall to nothing but pocket change? No. A couple of small businesses won’t make a big dent. But a dent will be made.
Just like any other legitimate business, a dispensary will be paying sales taxes to make the county happy, property taxes to make the school happy, and income taxes to make the city happy.
We can always discuss this further while drinking and Jack and Coke on Courthouse Square while DORA is in effect.