I’ve been thinking. If the federal government were to ever legalize marijuana, that would open the market for legal farming. It would be another cash crop farmers could consider to sustain their livelihood. Moral and legal entanglements aside, there’s a major caveat to this.
Once it’s legal and proven profitable on the market, and once boards of directors can convince their shareholders that it’s a good crop to get into, Monsanto, Cargill, and ADM will effectively take over and sue into contractual submission any farmer who doesn’t grow their patented genetically-modified seeds, just as they currently do with soy, corn, cotton, and wheat. Any independent farmer running a grow-op with heritage seeds will have a planeload of relentless, deeply-pocketed lawyers at their door to coerce them into destroying their crops because the company’s GMO seeds are somehow mysteriously growing on their land without permission.
It’s inevitable. You know this to be true. Where there is money to be made, there will be multinationals there to consume it, no matter who suffers.
Next you know, the nation is smoking Roundup-Ready weed stock, but everybody will be too stoned to care.