Stoner News; Colorado Introduces Marijuana Tracking System
Big Brother is constantly watching the citizens of… well… everywhere. It’s not a secret that someone can (at any time) access the GPS on your phone and know exactly where you are at any time. Or they can read your texts from a remote location. Even if you don’t believe that, you have to admit that the introduction of smart phones wasn’t just for the convenience of the consumers.
Now, Colorado officials are revealing their plans for a system that will track the sale of marijuana… And people are not happy. MITS (or Marijuana Inventory Tracking System) is designed to keep tabs on the sale of marijuana in Colorado after January 1st. The Denver Post had three reasons why this tracking system will create a huge headache for those attempting to keep track of the weed sales.
– Since the stores don’t accept credit cards, all transactions will be done in cash. This means that there can be money vanishing, being shorted, and in some cases, adding up to too much of a profit. Cash businesses are usually primarily bars and restaurants, where the employees get tipped. Dealing in a medical environment with all cash and no credit will end up getting extremely confusing for the regulators to audit.
– Every single gram of bud must be accounted for and the regulators take the weight very seriously. Unfortunately, since marijuana weight can vary day to day based solely on small factors like humidity, this will be an extremely painful and arduous process. And you thought trimming was a pain…
– The amount of cash and pot that will overflow to the black market will be very carefully regulated. But we all know how sneaky criminals are. If there are people who want to sell marijuana on the streets, it’s going to happen, ESPECIALLY if there are too many regulations put in place.
The lawmakers need to understand that with something like cannabis, where the plant needs no human interaction (unlike tobacco and alcohol) to be ingested, it is extremely difficult to regulate. No matter what regulations are put in to place, there will always be a criminal side to cannabis because the government has made it that way. Not only that but patients have made it very clear that a system such as MITS is the absolute invasion of patient privacy. Since every gram needs to be accounted for, every patient will be tracked for how much they buy, how often, and from where. Does that sound fair to you?