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GeneralMarijuana.com, A Center for Legal Cannabis Ventures, Calls for America to Learn from General Motors Bankruptcy and Marijuana Prohibition
06/01/09 | PRWeb | Press Release

June 1, 2009 -- General Marijuana, a center for a group of legal cannabis-business oriented websites, is calling for Americans to learn from the General Motors bankruptcy and think seriously about the real costs of cannabis prohibition.

Justin Hartfield, the managing partner at GeneralMarijuana.com, noted that most of the problems facing the world economy today resulted from a combination of bad cost accounting and even worse risk assessment. "The same hard truths apply to the war on cannabis, which has been a social and economic disaster," he said.

Hartfield emphasized that legalizing cannabis should not been seen as a solution for the current economic crisis in California or elsewhere, because it simply will not happen soon enough to generate significant tax revenues.

He added, "If we can think beyond today's headlines, we will see that cannabis has an important role to play in many areas, when free enterprise is indeed free to develop it. Legal cannabis industries - medical, agricultural/industrial, and recreational, would be far larger than General Motors."

Richard Cowan, a former CEO of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and a partner in GeneralMarijuana.com, is a critic of media coverage. He observed, "It is absurd that almost no one even seemed to notice this fiasco until recently, because we have been conditioned by irresponsible journalism to think of the whole subject as a joke. Well, 20 million arrests are not funny, 'Dude'!"

Cowan said, "We learned about the medical value of cannabis because it was used illegally by patients who defied both the law and the medical establishments. In his seminal work, Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine, Dr. Lester Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School predicted that the full medical potential of cannabis could not be realized until it is completely legalized.

"We have learned about the potential for industrial hemp from other countries, but American agriculture, which otherwise leads the world, has been denied permission to grow a plant that was grown by Washington and Jefferson.

"We have learned from the Dutch experience of tolerating retail sales of cannabis that there are real economic and social benefits from separating marijuana from the hard drug markets. Dutch 'coffee shops' have almost no problems comparable to those caused by bars, and they generate hundreds of millions in tax revenues from the tourism and hospitality industries."

Hartfield concluded, "If General Motors was the icon of the old American economy, we intend for General Marijuana to be the model for the next phase of America's growth. Our old industrial base inevitably declined as the rest of the world offered lower cost manufacturing, but America's knowledge-based industries have shown the way forward."

GeneralMarijuana.com offers guidance to entrepreneurs who understand the potential of a wide variety of LEGAL cannabis ventures.

GeneralMarijuana.com's websites are linked from its home page, and it will have a booth at the THC Expo in Los Angeles, June 13th and 14th.

Cowan added, "We still have a sense of humor and believe that what's good for General Marijuana really is good for the USA."

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