Chronic Conditions
Derek the Last writes in about a good prediction that he made:
| Ваше Императорское Величество, Recently, in the state that I hail from, the voters passed a measure to allow medical marijuana to be legal and joined the ranks of many others across this land to have done so. This effort was spearheaded by a well-known ambulance chaser lawyer who spent millions of dollars to promote this cause. This has been his passionate cause for years and his main argument was is that BIG PHARMACEUTICAL is against it because they want to keep you addicted to their pills and see the threat of something that can be grown cheaply by local businesses. Supposedly BIG PHARMACEUTICAL spent millions to fight our plucky hero to keep the miracle plant from becoming legal. Now, I do not really care too much what people do in the privacy of their own torch lit huts. I voted against it because I do not like passing new laws when an existing law can be amended or repealed. I just think that passing new laws makes people way too comfortable with allowing more regulation into their lives. I also just believe that thinking that passing this is somehow poking BIG PHARMACEUTICAL in the eyes and that it is howling in rage somewhere because it has been thwarted once again is naive. I never trust talk from an avowed leftist (the lawyer is a heavy contributor to any candidate with a D by their name) about something that will be good for small business and a boost to the economy. Sure they tout the wonders that it has done for the economy of Colorado, but I think they are lying about what is sure to come down the road. The way it stands right now as each state makes it legal they are coming up with their own regulations on growers, suppliers, doctors, etc. This is prudent as I feel that these things are always best done on a local level. However, the local propaganda broadcast this morning was talking about how a neighboring state is contemplating honoring the prescription cards from my state. This now means that it will be crossing borders. I also see that since each place has its own rules and regulations there will at some point be calls for some sort of standardization for the benefit of public safety. Soon the Federal Government will be compelled to bring all of this under some sort of control. Here is how I see it playing out. Little Jimmy Hemphead will get sick or hurt himself while smoking buds for his chronic work aversion disorder. Jimmy’s mother will then mount a crusade for the sake of the children because Jimmy bought his stash from a dispensary over the border and since their standards are not the same as the standards where they live something must be done. Congress tearfully agrees and exercises the Commerce Clause and rolls out the regulation machine to start cranking out rules so that no other mother will have to suffer again. As the federal regulations pour out across the land all these small business owners will be unable to stay in business trying to comply. Then as the outcry from those that need their medicine to function rings out across the land a new hero will arise. A hero that is big enough to absorb the cost of compliance. A hero that has the ability from years of experience to comply with onerous regulation when it comes to matters medicinal. A hero that is already laying the ground work for this very outcome. That hero is BIG PHARMACEUTICAL. Yes, the villain will rise as the hero. You can also be sure that BIG TOBACCO is just waiting in the wings to do the same for those areas that allow recreational use. Something that was sold to us under the guise of freedom will quickly come under control of the only BIG that the left loves, BIG GOVERNMENT. Ultimately these laws are not about helping people, but an easy way to score votes by giving the illusion that freedom is being denied to them by some sort of big corporation and that only the bigger government can give them that freedom. I also bet that the lawyer in my state that pushed for this cannot wait to sue BIG PHARMACEUTICAL for damages since the cash he needs to live on can never be supplied by suing the small businesses that produce the current supply. Then again maybe I am just paranoid and should seek out a prescription for some sweet chronic to help mellow me out. Loyalty until death, P.S. If I should stumble upon any teleportation devices in the Castle do you use pre-unification or post-reformation destination coordinates. Just asking for a friend. |
The Czar think you have this exactly right, and you understate the involvement of Big Tobacco, who is very much involved with e-cigarettes and vaping right now as new profit centers. Recreational marijuana use will almost certainly be taken over by Big Tobacco, so enjoy.
The Czar has long maintained, by the way, that liberalization of drug laws is more a libertarian thing, and that Progressives actually want to restrict it because most historical Progressives wee anti-drug (note the smoking bans). This plays nicely into your assumption above that Progressives will be okay with marijuana liberalization, just so long as the Government controls and regulates the hell out of it.
As far as we can discern, you have only one question: teleportation. This is more GorT and Mandarin’s thing. Confucius,* as of course you know, simply dematerializes and rematerializes at will. The Czar and Doc and Ghettoputer pretty much wander over to wherever we need to go (the Leaping Peacock, typically); if we need teleportation, we talk to the other two.
But here’s what we understand. GorT doesn’t use triangulation coordinates, but trilateralization** vectors, which is a really long series of strings of 1s and 0s arranged in a series of overlapping spheres. The Czar appreciates that when doing time travel, you have to be pretty certain what you’re doing because the Earth’s rotation must be factored into it, as well as its position around the Sun, the Sun’s position around the galaxy, and the galaxy’s desired position in the Local Group…otherwise, teleporting back to November, 2016, will find you dying pretty quickly in deep space, far from where you want to be. Don’t mess with this unless you know what you’re doing. There is some math involved, we believe.
Mandarin’s method is totally inscrutable, and he doesn’t even talk of coordinates, but of stuff like “Transverse multifolds across the Hyper-Empyrean bridgeway as now in Harmonic Phase.” The Czar isn’t sure about what he says, exactly, but you know what Mandy’s like.
*For those who came in late, Confucius is the Gormogons’ Œcumenical Volgi.
**For those of you playing our radio game, your decoder ring should be set to Hex. Your secret message of the day is: 56 41 4c 4b 49 4c 4d 45 52 48 49 47 48 53 43 48 4f 4f 4c 46 4f 4f 54 42 41 4c 4c 52 55 4c 45 53! Good luck, everyone!
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.