Black Market in the BFD
Even the swap-meets around here are getting pretty corrupt. ~ Bob Dylan, “Brownsville Girl”
Even the swap-meets around here are getting pretty corrupt. ~ Bob Dylan, “Brownsville Girl”
Even the swap-meets around here are getting pretty corrupt. ~ Bob Dylan, “Brownsville Girl”
There was another shooting at another illegal marijuana dispensary in Bakersfield the other day. Or maybe it was just another “body found” at an illegal dispensary in Bakersfield – the current murder capital of the Golden West. Or maybe the body was found during another raid on another illegal Bakersfield dispensary. It’s hard to keep track around here.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to get ahold of my friend Julie. I’m worried about her and her husband, Carlos. Haven’t heard from them in a while. They’re both sick, both victims of horrendous diseases, compounded by an inadequate, punishing healthcare system.
He has a severe case of Valley fever, diagnosed on his deathbed after a six-month misdiagnosis. After he turned away a priest offering last rites, his increasingly debilitating illness was diagnosed at literally the last moment.
And then, the financially catastrophic treatment gave him skin cancer. He’s covered in painful rashes and blistering sores that have him constantly in and out of the ER.
But the last two times I caught up with Julie, she was the one in the ER, almost too sick to talk.
Before COVID, I could pop over the mountain to Pure Life Alternative Wellness in Chatsworth to pick up medicine I know will help them both.
Before the ban, I could get it in Bakersfield
It isn’t very pretty What a town without pity can do. ~ Gene Pitney, “Town Without Pity"
Even the swap-meets around here are getting pretty corrupt. ~ Bob Dylan, “Brownsville Girl”
Even the swap-meets around here are getting pretty corrupt. ~ Bob Dylan, “Brownsville Girl”
Cannabis Banned in the Golden Empire
Thanks to a 2013 state Supreme Court decision, California cities and counties have the option of banning marijuana dispensaries.
In 2017, Kern County banned all marijuana dispensaries, including medical, leaving patients to fend for themselves, forcing many into the so-called black market. You know, where all the bodies are dropping. Not recommended for the sick and debilitated, or even a tough old broad like me.
“If you’re looking for the avatar of recalcitrance to cannabis law reform,” wrote David Downs, in Leafly.com, “look no further than the arid, low-income wastelands northeast of Los Angeles. Across California, more than 800 licensed medical or adult-use stores or delivery services generated more than $350 million in tax revenue in 2018. Not in Kern.”
At a time when Kern County’s oil industry was already in crisis due to climate change, plus Governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to ban fracking and reduce fossil fuel production here; with homeless encampments spreading like floodwaters all across town; with danger-zone air quality exacerbated by smoke from wild fires, themselves exacerbated by drought, and “an economy reliant on drilling, farming, prisons, and the military,” to quote David Downs again – with all that going against it, the Kern County Supervisors managed to reject “an estimated 8,750 jobs and $37.5 million in annual legal cannabis tax revenue.”
Worse, they forced Valley fever and cancer patients, seniors, and disabled veterans to drive over a hundred miles one-way for high priced, over-taxed legal medicine, or brave the black market to acquire whatever’s on hand – source, quality, safety, and dosage all unknown – with none of the variety found in legal stores.
Speaking of variety, when the subject of medical marijuana comes up, most folks don’t immediately think of suppositories. However, if nausea from disease or its treatment means a patient can’t keep anything down, the fast-acting, long-lasting relief of a cannabis infused suppository can be a godsend. But it’s not something you’ll find on the black market, or in a town where city council members still recite the tired old “gateway to drug addiction” bullshit as the reason to ban.
You can get it if you really try. ~ Jimmy Cliff
Even the swap-meets around here are getting pretty corrupt. ~ Bob Dylan, “Brownsville Girl”
You can get it if you really try. ~ Jimmy Cliff
But all is not lost. The Medical Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (MCRSA) of 2016 allows deliveries from “legal” cities to folks living in “banned” cities.
Empire Health & Wellness in nearby Empire (a mere 204 miles from Bakersfield) now delivers the topicals and elixirs by Making You Better Brands (MYBB) that I’ve relied on for almost ten years. I know this medicine can help. I’ve seen it work miracles. I’ve experienced miracles myself. Which is why I can recommend it without hesitation.
And thanks to the mighty Amanda Soens, event coordinator extraordinaire and distribution and marketing wizard of the Central Valley, I finally received my first delivery from Empire Wellness. I rushed the Nternal full spectrum elixir to Julie and the Xternal Balm to Carlos. By the next day, she was already feeling better. A week later she said, “I feel like this is helping me more than my doctors.”
What a relief – in more ways than one – to have medicine like Nternal elixirs and Xternal topicals delivered to my door during this accursed pandemic. Not to mention a heady array of cannabis flowers for my smoking pleasure.
Which reminds me. I’m on my last bowl of Sour Diesel, a perky Sativa by the house of reveur, delivered by Empire Health & Wellness. It most definitely helped inspire and energize the telling of this tale, although there may have been some black-market bud involved, as well. After all, my way IS the high way.
April 20, 2021
Drilling
More Drilling
You can get it if you really try. ~ Jimmy Cliff
“If you’re looking for the avatar of recalcitrance to cannabis law reform,” wrote David Downs, in Leafly.com, “look no further than the arid, low-income wastelands northeast of Los Angeles.
More Drilling
More Drilling
More Drilling
Kern County Supervisors vote to dig 40,000 more oil wells over next fifteen years.
