I can understand how people in the 70s felt when the country seemed to have become unrecognizable in two decades and the average story now seemed to be coming from another planet or the mind of a satirist.
But here we are in this exciting world whose stories would be implausible and insane by 2001 standards.
Take this headline above. It’s an actual story.
A judge has ordered New York regulators not to award any more cannabis licenses pending a decision on an explosive lawsuit alleging officials favored convicted drug felons over disabled veterans to sell legal marijuana.
The lawsuit alleges regulators with the Office of Cannabis Management and state Cannabis Control Board failed to set up a legal cannabis market envisioned by New York’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA), which specifically lists disabled vets as one of five priority “social and economic equity” groups to get at least 50% of employment opportunities in the budding pot industry.
New York’s first licenses went to “justice involved” individuals or partners of felons convicted of selling marijuana, the suit claims.
Only disabled vets who partnered with someone with a marijuana conviction were awarded a license during the first go-round.
Justice-involved or justice-impacted is the latest euphemism for criminals. In its bid for DEIness, New York reserved licenses for people who had been busted before, some of whom were likely drug dealers.
Letting them have first crack at dealing drugs (legally) was a kind of reparations for police defunders.
The whole story is also incomprehensibly pointless because, despite the lobbying of the legalize drugs crowd, most people are perfectly happy buying cheaper illegal drugs.
California’s legal drugs business is going bust. Oregon cannabis businesses are “struggling to survive”.
Handing out drug dealing licenses to veterans in New York isn’t doing them any favors. Neither is handing them out to druggies who will be competing with the product being sold more cheaply by their street comrades. Legal pot has gone to pot. The real drug dealers have won and will go on winning.