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Paltry pot inventory pushes prices up

December 10, 2011

Supply, demand, plant mold, and federal busts are pushing up the price of marijuana in California. [California Watch]

And braced by threats from the U.S. Justice Department, property owners who rent to dispensaries now face the possibility of their property being seized. Many are closing.

That’s bad news for medical marijuana users, the dispensary operators, and others who enjoy current commerce because of the plant, but a plus for bolder growers willing to step into the breach.

In a marketplace where the product’s price has been steadily declining since 1996, this constriction has some buyers paying as much as 40 percent more, with the wholesale price rise occurring just over the past year or so. Now, even a buyer with an established source can expect to pay $2,000 to $2,500  or more a pound for decent-quality pot.

Economic factors and nature have played a role in the diminishing inventory of high-quality, outdoor-grown cannabis available for California marijuana consumers. But the biggest single contributing component has been stepped-up,  hyper-active enforcement of federal laws by the DEA and other U.S. law enforcement agencies.

The rapidly expanding production of potent marijuana in this state has gotten the attention of federal authorities who often enlist the aid of local sheriffs’ departments to raid licensed pot dispensaries — busts that often are highly publicized.

Now law enforcement authorities are reporting a surge in so-called “black market” sales by those growers who remain, many of whom are shrinking their harvest and increasing profits by sending their product out-of-state for two and three times the money.


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In light of such bad news, what’s a guy to do but draw the shades and fire a bowl.


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Libertarians are Republicans that want to get high and get laid.


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The president’s name is Obama, the governor’s name is Brown, name misuse is one of the leading causes of deletion on this website. correct proper names. please.

this includes other users here

moderation questions and comments Email


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As a known violator I agree to comply. Sorry Karen.


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The moderation here is a team effort hopefully a more coherent conversation and commentary will result your input is welcome Email


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So much for free speech. To hell with Cal Coast News.


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This has nothing to do with free speech, this is a moderated forum. If someone comes to your home you have the right to kick them out, CCN has the right to dump anyone of us. I don’t always agree with the dumping of posts but over all I’m glad that they do it, I wouldn’t post here if they didn’t.


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This has everything to do with free speech, this is the press and it is a for profit business.


BTW – Karen is not the moderator.


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No, I disagree. I have said this over and over, you can’t IMO compare this to the LA Times or NBC news. This is a new age and things are done differently in mediums like this. I’ve seen sites that have no moderation, the trolls take over and it’s not even possible to have a decent discourse at all. Many of us don’t use our real name and that invites the trolls in. I’m glad that we can hide our identities but that brings a new set of issues and I feel that they handle it very well here.


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I certainly do agree that sites such as this one require a certain degree of moderation and rules. You weren’t here in the old day’s (2007) when it was a hey day where anything and everything goes, it was near literal insanity as the threads were rife with TROLLS. Then “Sister George” appeared on scene and her photo was displayed (a nun with a ruler) along with her announcement that she was here to oversee and maintain some order!


I don’t necessarily believe it’s an easy task to filter through all the personalities or to discount (100%) one’s own personal opinions/beliefs in effecting an even degree of moderation. Generally for the most part, I think the moderation here is applied evenly and reasonably about 95% of the time and that is actually a very good record when one considers that we are all simply human first and the rest is secondary. That includes nuns ;)


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Cindy,


Why do you continue to proverbially “step in it?” Do you enjoy this continued act of yours? I know I’ve easily chastised you before, but don’t make it so easy for us, okay?


CCN is a private forum, and has subjective protocols, whether we like them or not, they are to be followed pertaining to their decisions. Certain posts can even degrade the reputation of CCN, so why should they remain? . This individual website is the private property of certain individuals. This can be equated as a home of the owners of CCN, therefore, you don’t let strangers do whatever they like in your house, do you? No you don’t. The same applies to CCN.


CCN in their subjective opinion, being it’s THEIR forum, should be able to make their decisions whether people are incapable of posting well thought out and civil comments, like my godly enlightened posts to date! Thank you, thank you, please hold the applause!


If CCN feels certain posts are not worthy because of the protocols they set forth, then why should they have a voice? Going to the extreme, should CCN allow outright racist, fowl language, and brutally hateful posts within their forum? No! They are a private enterprise with an image to uphold, barring any “free speech” issues!


Quit wasting your time in here, now get back to your biblical womanly duties post haste!

(1 Corinthians 11:9, 1 Corinthians 11:7, 1 Peter 3:6, Genesis 18:12, 1 Corinthians 14:34; Titus 2:5, Genesis 3:16; Ephesians 5:22, 24; 1 Peter 3:1)


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Prohibition has not, and never will work. Yet we keep doing the insane expecting a different outcome.


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That’s because there’s lots and lots of $ to be made from drug–especially for the power elite.


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Yet it can be easily grown in your own backyard. The sheer stupidity in this is mind boggling.

Legalize the sale of seeds and growing up to five mature plants. Break the cycle of insanity.


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I wouldn’t want to grow it. If you grow it, unless you can have an expensive indoor grow room then there’s good chance that someone will steal it. Or if you have kids you might not want it out in the open like that. If you have kids you might want to lock it up away from the kids.


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One day it will be like tomatoes.


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There is a reason it is called “weed” after all.


“In 1619 Jamestown colony law declared that all settlers were required to grow hemp. George Washington grew hemp at Mount Vernon as one of his three primary crops. The use of hemp for rope and fabric was ubiquitous throughout the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States.”


Hemp does not contain the chemical that gives the “high” associated with the use of marijuana, but it is illegal to grow; we can thank Harry J. Anslinger, Henry DuPont and William Randolph Hearst for that.


What is the big deal now days about growing hemp versus marijuana? The plants to the untrained eye (or even the trained eye unless you inspect close up) appear to look the same. Heaven forbid we had farmers growing a crop that could produce fiber and oil that could be extracted that could grow in soil that nothing else will; but damn it, somebody could sneak some real marijuana in among those hemp plants!


Anyone with half a brain knows that the so-called “war on drugs” is a complete and utter failure for anyone and everyone concerned, with the exception of law enforcement being able to swell their budgets to fight this stupid “war”.


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Good point Bob. I forgot about the hemp use. I haven’t had the oppertunity to purchace but I understand hemp clothing is tough as nails yet soft.


http://www.hempfood.com/info/hemp-clothing.html


To bad with all the Gov. B.S. we are not using a great resource.


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“Legalize the sale of seeds and growing up to five mature plants. Break the cycle of insanity.”


It already is legal to grow five plants! You just have to pay Dr Reese $150.00 for a note to say she agrees with you! ;)


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Bingo, legalize it and it takes all the money out of it.

If someone grows their own for their own comsumption, there is no need for big business (pot dispensaries), the war on drugs or the illegals coming here in the name of the mexican cartels to grow it.

And since there would be no monetary incentive in it, why would someone steal it from someone else?


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You people always have a way to throw in and blame unions for all that’s wrong with the world. I think a good drinking game would be that every time a con says the word ‘union’ we should down a jello shot. We’d all be plastered within an hour. Honestly it’s gotten to a point that when I see you guys posting about the evil unions I laugh as it’s just so predictable, it sorta takes away from what you’re taking about. Any problem in the world, cancer etc,,it’s because of the unions and Obama.


This war on drugs IMO is completely caused by the big pharmacy corps, not because of the DEA or those other things you listed but because of the politicians and the pharma lobbyist. I of course like Obama but he has a few failings one being that he is a sell out to big pharma, I believe one of his large campaign contributors was/is a big phara corp. These politicians are all corrupt, but I will still vote for Obama because IMO he’s less corrupt. It’s sad, until we get the money out of these politicians (both right and left) pockets from these big corps things won’t change.


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Typoqueen, you need to look into the law enforcement unions and associations and see who they support and lobby. Anything that makes more laws and increases incarceration is on their agenda.

Their jobs depend on it.


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I don’t have time to look into everything but I’m sure that have been negative issues with every union at one time or the other, like a HOA or any group they’re only as good as the union officers and the members. IMO most people are not bad and neither are the unions, they are the people. But I’ve had problems with unions. In one business that I used have we worked in different cities across the country. Some counties accross the country required that we hire union workers from that area. Due to not being in those areas for long we didn’t have time to train them so we would have to pay a union member to basicly sit while making prevailing wage while watching everyone else work. But then on the other hand I’ve stood side by side, walked with and demonstrated with the Teachers Union. Like most things we take the good with the bad, over all there’s more good with unions than bad IMO.


Although there’s not enough time to read everything that I’d like to read, one thing I have read extensively about is the incredible amount of lobbying by the conservative groups and US prisons. Then awhile back zap posted a particularly good article regarding the Koch Bros which led me to spend too much researching even more regarding the prison lobby. If you Google something to the effect of ‘ALEC private prisons’ then you will see that most if not all of the bills that contributed to having more prisoners in our prisons since then any place in the world you see that it’s due to lobbying by ALEC with the ”’sole”’ purpose of filling up their prisons, this started in 1984. I have posted reputable links about that (don’t have time now to find them), why don’t you post a reputable link that demonstrates who lobbies the most regarding harsh laws and increasing incarcerations as it pertains to the ‘war on drugs’..who made that little diddy up BTW. Show the documentations that demonstrates that the LEU/LEA is behind this more than ALEC or for that matter any lobbying these unions have done on this particular issue.


[typed fast excuse typos]


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standup, FINALLY YOU SUCCUMBED and blamed the Unions on this topic as well, it’s about time!!! We were worried about you in that you forgot about your vacant and same old insidious talking points from before!


12/10/2011 at 11:41 pm


standup,


You forgot to mention that the Unions are probably at fault as well in your dissertation.


Like or Dislike: Thumb up 1 Thumb down


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No need to worry about me Teddy.


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Our Christian God made “Mary-Jane”, so why not use it medicinally when it is shown, with the science to back it up (that ungodly word), to really help with safe and effective treatment for the symptoms of cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, pain, glaucoma, epilepsy, and other conditions!


You don’t think that some prescription drug companies are lobbying in Washington to prevent this known plant from helping in so many ways medically, do you? Naw, that would be ungodly, and since we’re founded upon Christian principles, especially the Republicans, I am sure that is not the case. I digress, how silly of me!


AMA’s stance on medical marijuana:

http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/

scroll down.


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We agree!!!!


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I just wish people would be more honest and just say, “Hey! I want to get high without breaking the law!” After all, we can drink alcohol if we so choose, it’s just another substance. Abused, it rots the brain, taken in small quantities, recreationally or medicinally, it’s great!


I’m pretty conservative/libertarian here, but if I saw on the ballot: Smoking Pot, yes or no; I’d vote YES.


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r0y, my friend is “honest” and takes it only for his multiple sclerosis pain. The high doses of prescription drugs, and needle punctures over time, were too much for him, therefore, he opted for medicinal marijuana. It has helped him considerably by using the vaporizer technique.


It’s pathetic that the government is still trying to quash this substance when it helps people medically in so many ways


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What did JESUS have to say about cannabis, Ted ?


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Slowerfaster,


Listen up heathen, I know of your stripes, and because of them, you’re a hell bound sinner and are probably a stoker of the first order!


I addressed this topic relative to the bible at the top of this thread!


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Judge not, lest ye be… oh, never mind.


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What’s pathetic is that the “gummint” is trying to over rule the will of the people. This was put to a vote and the people have spoke. What LE needs, is to DO WHAT WE SAY or get another job working for somebody else.


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Cinday, hmmmm, “gummint” as a racist ring to it! Certainly you’re not racist are you? Naw, forget about it!


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I like your overly-zealous, AA-style pro-Jesus personality better than some of the others you’ve exhibited.


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Our wonderful federal government can’t just quit the war on drugs. Way too many salaries and pensions depend on it. What a job creator this has been. More cops, more DEA agents, more child protective services personnel, more drug testing labs, more prisons, more guards, more government lobbying personnel, more DA’s, more judges, and the list goes on and on. These folks really care about this war as it pays them extremely well to be a part of it. They don’t care if they have been losing it since the SOB Nixon started it as long as their gravy train continues. They all damn well know what a waste it is but they do not care as long as they get paid. I hope they are real happy that armed agents have gone into people’s homes and pointed m16’s at kids just for a plant. If this country woke up and told the leaders of this country that this war must stop and put 1/2 of the money into treatment and lay off all these blood suckers, we would be so much better off. All the bs rhetoric from Parkinson to hbmmr is only there to create and keep all these government jobs. Make drugs legal and taxed. Wala, the cartels are out of business and we don’t have to keep sending billions to Mexico for a war we can’t win. Plus, an added bonus will be that the killing rampage in Mexico will stop. The answer seems so simple to me but what do I know. I don’t have some drug related union or big pharma shoving cash up my rear end to keep the ball rolling. And, by the way Phitzer (the largest drug maker in the world), how many people died on your drugs last year. Well, 3000 people have died from terrorism since 2001 (world trade center) and about 490,000 from pharmaceutical drugs (FDA approved). From illegal drugs – about 45,000.


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Has anyone noticed all the adds on TV lately about the effects that many of the FDA approved pharmaceutical anti depressants have on a developing fetus? These drugs like Prozac and Zoloft have been around for at least 15-20 years and were said to be safe for pregnant woman. Now we hear they are causing all sorts of serious birth defects. I find it ironic that CPS takes children from parents who smoke marijuana while the FDA is “manufacturing” and dealing drugs that are permanently damaging hundreds of thousand of children before they’re even born. Go figure…….


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It takes more than parents smoking pot to have their kids taken away. It actually takes quite a bit to have ones kids removed. I wish that they would take some of these kids away easier than they do. For the last 15 or so years CPS has had a strict policy regarding keeping the kids with the parents, they will go to great lengths to keep families together. In part it’s because they know it’s good for the kids but it’s also IMO because they are under staffed and they don’t have enough homes or funding for the kids. It makes me sick to see some of the homes that CPS sends these kids back to.


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“It takes more than parents smoking pot…..”. Actually, ask some of the doobie dozen about that and you will find that all of them had their kids taken away for a while. I have a strict policy. I hate CPS and I hate law enforcement who don’t follow the will of the voters.


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“I hate CPS and I hate law enforcement who don’t follow the will of the voters.”


ME TOO…. I know good people who have nightmare stories about CPS. I have a very close friend who ended up moving away and giving up on regaining custody of her autistic daughter. She was an excellent mother and was caught between leaving her husband or taking a chance that CPS would attempt to level charges against both her and her husband for sexually molesting this young autistic girl. The girl had never been abused and when Cheryl insisted that her husband had never did anything like that, CPS said that she must be molesting the child as well. Cheryl gave up after her husband suddenly died of a heart attack one night after reading what CPS was MAKING UP ABOUT HIM. By then 2 years had gone by and her autistic daughter had been taught by CPS that mom and dad were bad people.


When I asked why she was giving up, she said : “It’s either walk away or walk into CPS with a machine gun”. I understood her pain and anger.


The reason CPS refused to return the girl is because the FED’s pay CPS over 5K a month to care for a disabled autistic prisoner such as Cheryl’s daughter.


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Oh geez Cindy, I simply don’t believe this story. There is more to it than your friend told you. For example: “By then 2 years had gone by and her autistic daughter had been taught by CPS that mom and dad were bad people.” I know for a fact that CPS doesn’t teach the kids anything like this. I have been to classes and workshops with case workers and to the contrary they are taught the opposite. If a foster parent is caught saying anything negative about a bio then they risk losing their license and the same goes for a case worker, they never ever say anything bad about the parents. They (foster parents and CPS) are taught to only say positive things even about the worse parents. They never say anything bad about the parents and I mean not a bad word. So that alone makes me doubt the whole story. My biggest problem with CPS is that they try too hard to reunite parents with their kids. I’ve seen the horrible scum bags get their kids back, IMO they go to far with this reunification policy that they have.


You always hear this same story (your story) about how CPS wants these kids for their money. Every single parent that has their kids removed says the same thing “they took my kid for no reason, they just want the money”. They don’t want more kids, they don’t have the resources nor the funding to care for more kids. The case workers are over burdened as it is. I have never seen an actual case where there wasn’t some warranted reason to take the kids from their family. BTW, did any of your friends family step up to care for the child? All family members are notified and asked to care for the children before they are placed in foster care.


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I know one of the doobie dozen that had his child taken, actually I also know a married couple that were part of the DD but I don’t believe that their kids were taken at all. But the single father that I know, his child was temporarily turned over to a relative. I said it takes more than parents smoking pot and that was more than parents just smoking pot. What should the govt. do with the kids if the parents are arrested and there’s no relatives avalible?


You hate CPS,,why? When a father uses his young daughter as an ash tray and she’s found with burns all over her body what do you suggest should happen with her if there aren’t relatives able to take her? If a child loses all of their family in say an car accident and there’s no family or when a child’s parents are meth heads what do you suggest we do with those kids, just let them live by themselves? CPS gets a bad rap but then again there are those of you here that hate them simply because they a govt. agency, which is rediculous. CPS does everything they can to keep the kids with their families.


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standup,


You forgot to mention that the Unions are probably at fault as well in your dissertation.


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Ted, you sound like the broken record I threw away 20 years ago. Go back to your bible. Move along, nothing to see here.


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Spot on standup,” the answer seems so simple”, but because of the big money involved and the government agencies involved, it will remain a federal offence.

By the way, weren’t those guns that went walking down to ole mexico on Obamas watch part of this whole seedy circle? And wasn’t that a federal offence?

Why would they need guns from the USA? Oh that’s right, the drug cartels got them. And since the killing needs to be stopped andthe drugs need to be stopped DEA, ICE, ATF and the DOJ all have cush jobs to do just that…


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Government oversight is pushing the costs of doing business(any business up).

The amount of pot grown in CA has skyrocketed and now leads the nation in total acres grown…

Most by mexican drug cartels and in Fresno county.


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Agreed, except for the Mexican drug cartels. The power elite/bankers/Military-Industrial Complex are ultimately behind the drug problem. Mexican drug cartels ultimately work FOR THEM. Have you heard of Operation Fast and Furious?


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Has Eric Holder? Depends on his state of mind, I suppose.


Guess it’s OK for the highest ranking law enforcement official to subvert the 2nd amendment, as long as he believed it was the right thing to do…


…and I thought we couldn’t get an AG worse than Janet Reno. Yikes.


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For every action there is a reaction. This reminds me of the Rolling Stone Dec. 2007 article on “How we lost the war on drugs”. The feds in their invinite wisdom spend a lot of time going after the Mexico pot coming into this country. In the meantime the Hells Angels started cranking (pardon the pun) up production of Meth in Ca. which is what has led to the Meth epidemic we have today.


Another reason why I say legalize and regulate with taxes. We are WASTING HUGE AMOUNTS of money (which could go to our schools and other uses) fighting something we have not been winning in the 40 years we have tried. THAT IS A FACT!! Enough already.


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We seem to have lost ALL the social wars we declared: poverty, drugs, education.


OK, we didn’t declare war on education, but we might as well have. More money, more years with lower results (unless you like to cheat! (sorry, 4 links there!)


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“OK, we didn’t declare war on education”


Oh yes you did. Those wars go by the names of ‘No Child Left Behind’ (thanks Ronnie) and the upcoming war called ‘govt. school vouchers’ have and will do great damage to our childrens education. I guess since Ronnie made it so teachers only teach to pass tests and not to really learn that there might be a bit of cheating, No Child Left Behind is a set up for failure.


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Ronnie? Who’s Ronnie? You think REAGAN had anything to do with No Child Left Behind?


The legislation was proposed by President George W. Bush on January 23, 2001. It was coauthored by Representatives John Boehner (R-OH), George Miller (D-CA), and Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Judd Gregg (R-NH). The United States House of Representatives passed the bill on May 23, 2001 (voting 384–45),[6] and the United States Senate passed it on June 14, 2001 (voting 91–8).[7] President Bush signed it into law on January 8, 2002.


…a BIT later than Reagan, but your ideologically-driven obsession is duly noted!


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I stand corrected, you are absolutely correct. I knew that but I was somehow crossing this in my mind with the ‘Just Say No’ campaign’ (to many sleepless nights lately), guess because the topic of the article is about pot,,who knows. But same difference, Ronnie, George, same thing just one was a better speaker/actor.


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