From “Medical marijuana patients just got huge win as N.J. court says company must pay injured worker’s bills” (nj.com):
The New Jersey Supreme Court dealt medical marijuana patients a big victory Tuesday, ruling unanimously that a construction company must pay for an injured employer’s medical cannabis bills.
The decision upheld an Appellate Division ruling from January 2020. That court said Vincent Hager’s former employer, M&K Construction, must foot the monthly bill for medical marijuana he uses to treat injuries he sustained on the job in 2001. As of early 2020, those costs were about $616 a month, according to court documents.
New Jersey’s medical marijuana patients have long complained of high costs. Prices have averaged between $350 to $500 an ounce. The law allows them to purchase up to 3 ounces each month, though most use less.
Only in America could we figure out a way for a literal “weed” to cost $7,400 per year per person!
It’s very easy in America to Manufacture Consent for weed. Someone’s going to have to go and make large-type, “For Dummies” versions of Chomsky’s books, so people sitting at home getting stoned can hit the high points without getting bogged down in the details. Works at College, too.
As always, Jim Anchower was the expert in these matters.
https://www.theonion.com/im-thinking-about-cutting-back-on-the-weed-1819583599
$500 is the costliest monthly habit I have ever heard proclaimed in a backyard of stoners. It’s the coca leaf and her derivativs, as well as the poppy and her dangerous children that must be confronted next.
I don’t know offhand the gross cost of ritalin is for an ADHD kid at MIT or Harvard. A barfly can go through $600 in two weeks if he is scrupulous.
For the uninformed, blue collar workplaces are pipelines for disability claims. Workers work long enough until they are fully vested and can claim workplace injury and then they enjoy the benefits paid thereof.
420: Maybe they could legalize growing marijuana at home and tell those who don’t have jobs that they need to grow their own weed (not too burdensome to water a few plants since the stoners, er, “patients”, don’t have jobs). Then the employer would just have to pay for a few ceramic pots, a grow lamp, and a bag of potting (so to speak) soil.
phil,
/rant
the problem most drug users have is that the drugs are too expensive and of uncertain quality. If we employed our unemployed in poppy, coca , and marijuana cultivation and curing, we would add to quality of life with higher quality, lower cost drugs; increasing real economic output and human happiness, while increasing liberty. Life, Liberty, Property, and the Pursuit of Happiness — that’s what government is supposed to encourage — the opposite of our current policies. Poppy and her derivatives are useful against pain and anxiety. Coca growing is ideal for high altitude states like Colorado and West Virgina (!). Best enjoyed in leaf form, chewed with calcium carbonate, it is a wonderful stimulant; superior to the methamphetamines we are feeding our kids and truck drivers. Pot, alcohol, and tobacco are as American as Mom, Baseball, and Apple Pie. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson traded pot growing tips. Whiskey and Tobacco both served as currency before, after, and during the Revolution. Taxing Whiskey inspired the eponymous Rebellion.
So if we legalize and encourage small-scale drug agriculture and production, according to the Jeffersonian model of an independent yeomanry, the international criminal cartels built on the drug laws would wither. The vast legal network built around fighting non-authorized drug use would wither. I am hopeful we are seeing the endgame of the totalitarian state. In Europe and America, the totalitarian rule is from the educated rent-seeking elites, under the alternating aegises (sp?) of medical and climate emergency. In China, the totalitarianism is from a political elite under the aegis of material prosperity. In Hong Kong, life is cheap, but toilet paper is expensive.
We should be in a period of universal prosperity — we are not. Why not? Because then all the nincompoops that are busy telling us how to run our lives would be out of work. Worse than losing income, or even power, they would lose their very reason for being – meddling in other people’s affairs.
/rant
@alex is everywhere, this article about howto maximize the coca leaf extraction is signed by Alex!
@420bday: Llipta is the traditional supplement to chewing the leaves.
https://cocateaexpress.com/chewing-coca-tea-best-way/
PS, I tried this in Peru, it was supposed to work as a performance enhancer.
My reaction:
1. I still got quite winded walking uphill.
2. There was no high, just numb gums, like I was visiting the dentist.
According to vice.com, “in Bogotá, Colombia, we know from experience that you can buy a gram of weed for 2,000 Colombian pesos ($0.70 USD)” With the latest rate of exchange, that’d be $15.30 an oz.
Meh. Vyvanse costs $10/pill, or $3650/year. Pot is only twice as much.