Judge says constitution protects right to grow tomato plants, why not cannabis?

[DNAprotection]

I've said this a thouand times.

I've never smoked weed once in my life. I spent many years working in law enforcement.

AND THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO LOGICAL REASON FOR WEED TO BE ILLEGAL.

Not one. In years of my job, I never once remember someone fighting because they were too high. Drunks? Daily. I did go to murders over illegal weed sales. But never once over illegal alcohol sales. I never saw one cop get shot trying to shut down an illegal alcohol operation (Though during prohibition it happened all the time). I did see a cop get shot trying to shut down an illegal weed operation.

It is fucking insane to have the right to buy all the booze you want, all the cigarettes you want, all the guns you want, all the knives and ammo and porn and junk food you want........but not a joint of weed.

It is insane to say a person does not have the right to grow a weed plant in their house for self use. BUT, to be willing to "fight to the death" over the right to keep and use an AK47 at home. BOTH should be legal to have at home.

In most states, it is legal to drive around with a fully loaded shotgun or .45 cal pistol in your front center console. But not a rolled up plant.

If weed were legalized, I wouldnt smoke it. For the same reason I dont smoke tobacco, or drink liquor. Its just not for me.

But cops are being shot trying to enforce a stupid law. Innocent people are being killed in fights over a stupid law. People's lives are being ruined or seriously damaged because of a stupid law. When I worked patrol, like many of my peers, we treated weed in practice just like alcohol. If you are smoking while driving, you go to jail. If you smoke on your front porch, and are not a dickhead to us, we ignore it. I told people to flush it or toss it 10X more than I took it, and the ones who got charged almost always got charged from being a rude asshole when someone was trying to cut them a break.

Any politicians, or person in general, who argues weed should be illegal is just plain wrong.

I appreciate and agree with your response truly I do, but the problem for me (and should be for you) is the word 'legalize', what does it really mean?
If your post was an equation, the numbers would all be accurate but some numbers are missing and numbers missing when trying to add an equation can be quite unforgiving in there resulting miscalculations.
If laws are not coherent with the natural reality that still exists whether we do or not, then such laws will result in chaos and will domino that chaos all throughout every aspect of human life just as it has with laws that outlaw plants etc.
The only way back to sanity is to recognize that gov has no authority to pass or enforce such laws. 'Legalization' will only result in an even far worse scenario than we already have, not to mention that imo when the fed legislation smoke clears we will be using gov approved strains only and all other varieties will still be schedule 1 and your brothers & sisters will still be dying trying to enforce the new 'legalization'.

 

[DNAprotection]

I have definitely heard of the EPA cracking down on tomato growers who were selling or giving away tomatoes.

Try it with lemonade stands. You have this nice lemon tree and decide to sell lemonade at a lemonade stand in your own front yard. What result? We all know. It's done all the time.

Start growing some beautiful foxglove plants, or belladonna. No limit on those. But you harvest the leaves process them and sell them. Now what happens? Clue, it's the death penalty.

Maybe you missed the question...this question goes to your own use outside of commerce.

Even though I disagree with the decision, SCOTUS has already ruled on the subject and stated you do not have the right to grow an illegal plant for your own consumption.

Gonzales v. Raich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I gave Robert the original framework for that case (2years prior to it being filed), unfortunately he left out some stuff that I thought was critical to getting a correct ruling.
I filed finally after he did and used what he left out, it put the court in a very difficult position because in order to dismiss my case they basically had to null and void the 9th amendment and severely neuter the 1st, and so they did.
It was clear to me at the time that if there had been more cases that reached for the 9th, for their self evident rights there might have been a different outcome and for sure the public discussion would have transformed in kind away from 'legalization' and to 'rights held by the people'...but my case was just a tree falling in the woods with no one there to hear or see it...NORML, DPA and MPP had mostly to do with keeping any media coverage to zero because they are entirely invested in 'legalization'.

 

[DNAprotection]

Maybe you missed the question...this question goes to your own use outside of commerce.

Even though I disagree with the decision, SCOTUS has already ruled on the subject and stated you do not have the right to grow an illegal plant for your own consumption.

Gonzales v. Raich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Supreme Court used the commerce clause to justify this decision, claiming personal consumption magically affects interstate commerce and therefore all marijuana everywhere in the US falls under federal jurisdiction.

So how come growing tomatoes for your own consumption doesn't?

Exactly the right question.
Court is used and controlled by lawyers and that will need to change before you start getting better rulings because lawyers are not willing to ask the more fundamental questions. No lawyer that I am aware of has ever argued that folks have the self evident right to posses and plant seeds for whatever reason in effort to meet their own needs to live etc, and to the best of my knowledge only one case in US history has ever done so and it was not filed by a lawyer.

 

[DNAprotection]

Even though I disagree with the decision, SCOTUS has already ruled on the subject and stated you do not have the right to grow an illegal plant for your own consumption.

Gonzales v. Raich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Supreme Court used the commerce clause to justify this decision, claiming personal consumption magically affects interstate commerce and therefore all marijuana everywhere in the US falls under federal jurisdiction.

So how come growing tomatoes for your own consumption doesn't?

Well, if someone like the OP would provide a link to the ruling, we’d find out.

The case sited for this thread is another of my personal cases and as of yet I do not have the ruling on line so sorry no link, but the judge in this state case is wrong in terms of being consistent with fed rulings.

 

[DNAprotection]

The Supreme Court used the commerce clause to justify this decision, claiming personal consumption magically affects interstate commerce and therefore all marijuana everywhere in the US falls under federal jurisdiction.

So how come growing tomatoes for your own consumption doesn't?

Well, if someone like the OP would provide a link to the ruling, we’d find out.

Hm.

When I search on the quoted parts in the OP, Google just returns this topic.

The state case ruling you are googling is not yet on the web because I dont have time to type it out and post yet.
Here is a fed ruling though in the case I filed in 2004:
ruling
The ruling is misleading though because the judge had already tossed out the 9th amendment argument that would have reaffirmed that we ALL have certain self evident rights inherently and that planting seeds is one of those and that the 9th guarded those rights etc...
Here is a link to a site that is not my site but they have posted much of that case, this link is to the appeals brief I filed in the 9th circuit court of appeals...the response was a rubber stamp:
appeal
There are many nuances to civil cases (especially these) that are not always revealed in the rulings or in the filings and that can only be found in transcripts of hearings etc and I wish I had more time or could type faster lol in effort to relay such but for now I gotta go...will be back later...thanks for the great responses in this thread so far

 

[DNAprotection]

The intent of the case linked in my last post here was to put gov on the receiving end of sort of a 'checkmate' with regards to at least one if not multiple fundamental self evident inherent rights linked to the 9th and 1st amendments mainly.

The foremost argument went to the 9th amendment and was seeking to reestablish that we all have certain unalienable self evident rights that are guarded by the constitution whether enumerated specifically or not and that the most basic in common necessary human activity is a place to start when trying to define such rights.

Its hard to imagine that any of the gardeners/farmers that signed on to the creation of this gov could have ever imagined that such a gov would one day presume the authority to reach in and regulate or outlaw gardening or farming a plant, let alone a plant that they themselves counted on for their survival in many ways.

So the 9th amendment argument was meant to reestablish the restriction of gov from holding such broad reaching authority over our personal gardens outside of commerce especially in terms of effectively outlawing any particular plant and or our personal interaction with such by growing and using such plants for our own needs and survival.

The secondary 1st amendment argument was in part intended to redefine the word 'religion' in the federal system with regard to its constitutional application.

In other words imo the 1st amendment is first because of its perceived importance and the first words of such go to 'religion' because that word was presumably linked to ones 'beliefs' which then dictate how one lives and imo how one lives or chooses to live is a fundamental issue.

As it stands your 'conscience' only has 'religious' weight in court if you are in the military and are objecting to killing another person etc, but your 'conscience' in the end could and in my view should be viewed as your own personal solitary 'religion' if you choose it to be.

In other words you should have some basic right to live by your conscience and link that to the 1st amen just as anyone who joins a 'church' or club imo has to do so and is afforded reach to the 1st amen etc.

My conscience fills the void where otherwise there might be a 'membership to a church' etc and imo we are all born with such an unalienable right.

The courts have standards to meet and then calculate whether your 'rights' might infringe or impose on the rights of another and thats where your rights would be bordered so its not just a 'free for all' I'm talking about here its about scales and balance.

I guess I'll leave it there for now accept to say that the laws are illegitimate and every experience I've had in court or otherwise concerning this issue has gone to verify such...there is no question in my mind that if we that care approached this situation and these laws as the illegitimate laws they are then this bit of tragic human history could maybe be behind us and our children wouldn't need to try and cope with our negligence in this area...
any thoughts?

 

[DNAprotection]

The above referenced case (in my last 2posts) never went to trail because the judge found that the case had no standing to proceed on.
The first ruling the judge made was to early on dismiss the 9th amendment argument/cause of action by stating that the 9th amendment only exists for judges to use as a tool in interpreting the rest of the constitution when adjudicating a case that poses a constitutional question and that the 9th amendment does not exist for a person to reach to when claiming a ’right’ guarded under the constitution.
Next order of business came with gov challenging ‘standing’.
‘Standing’ is about proving you have a case and or proving you have the right to proceed with a case into trial because you have been unjustifiably wronged or are about to be wronged.
One must show that one is in imminent danger of irreparable harm if the case is trying to prevent imminent irreparable harm.
In this case I had 100,000+ cannabis seeds to which gov has laws that require such possession to be punishable by life in prison and I was in part trying to avoid such irreparable harm by challenging the constitutionality of such laws.
In the first challenge to the cases standing gov claimed that because I had not been harmed yet, I had no case and that just because gov has a law doesn’t mean they are going to for sure enforce it on me.
I argued that speculation about whether or not the gov would enforce such a law is irrelevant because the threat remains either way and that the case was filed to avoid such unconstitutional harm befalling me and that gov had made ample threats in public to reasonable conclude imminent danger.
In what appeared to be a precedent setting ruling on the issue of ‘standing’ I won that hearing and the case was set for trial.
Then before trial, to my surprise and dismay gov filed another challenge to standing and was aloud a ‘redo’, only this time they went after the ‘merits’ of the case (which now had been cut to only the 1st amen cause of action) stating that outlawing one plant species does not create enough ‘harm’ for standing in that a person could grow any other kind of plant etc.
Gov won the no standing argument in that hearing and the case was never allowed to proceed into trial.
Oddly enough though the real test of the laws legitimacy was yet to come in that was gov going to let me walk away with the 100,000+ seeds and go on about my gardening uninterrupted…they did and so the gov attorney was some what correct in that I have not been messed with by the feds with regards to my garden as of yet.
Imo its because the case did show the laws to be illegitimate and gov just wants to avoid such arguments at all costs.
This solitary case was only a tree falling in the judicial woods with no one there to hear it, but if cases like this were filed in every fed district I’m convinced gov would have a much harder time avoiding trial and certainly the media would grab hold of such news etc and imo such an effort would cause the public debate to shift into the area of unalienable rights, which is exactly what its all about.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

The fundamental tenet of Wickard and its progeny, such as Raich, is that the United States is a single Nation, not a collection of independent countries; and that its economy functions as a single entity. The states therefore do not have their own economic systems, where the notion of an ‘intrastate economy’ is indeed nonsense.

Consequently, the actions of a singe grower can have an effect on the economy as a whole, to believe otherwise is naïve. The Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to regulate all markets, it doesn’t say what markets it may or may not regulate, nor does it specify the size of a given market that may be regulated, or the amount of activity that must occur in a given market to justify regulation, simply that it has the authority to regulate.

 

[DNAprotection]

The fundamental tenet of Wickard and its progeny, such as Raich, is that the United States is a single Nation, not a collection of independent countries; and that its economy functions as a single entity. The states therefore do not have their own economic systems, where the notion of an ‘intrastate economy’ is indeed nonsense.

Consequently, the actions of a singe grower can have an effect on the economy as a whole, to believe otherwise is naïve. The Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to regulate all markets, it doesn’t say what markets it may or may not regulate, nor does it specify the size of a given market that may be regulated, or the amount of activity that must occur in a given market to justify regulation, simply that it has the authority to regulate.

The thing is though that here we are talking about one's personal use at home outside of any reasonable definition of the 'markets' or 'commerce'.
Even more fundamental, what if we are talking about just growing plants outside of or before any harvested use?
In the wheat case (if I remember correctly) the farmer was signed into a USDA contract and even though the issue was over what he grew for his own families personal use the court held that his activities did effect commerce, but it seems that the obligation to his USDA contract was a relevant component of that ruling.
In the Raich case (if I remember correctly) one or more of the justices seemed to be wanting a more fundamental argument to work with, but there was none and so the case was decided on the issue of commerce etc. I wish I could remember the poppy seed bagel quote?
Have you thought about the 9th amendment and how it plays in terms of the 'rights' or issue in question here?

 

[DNAprotection]

In 1994, before there was any state ‘medical cannabis exemption’ laws (and previous to the federal civil case filed in 2004 referenced in posts 25,26 & 27) I was involved in an another effort to show that the laws effectively outlawing plants and our interaction with such are illegitimate/unconstitutional.
Because there was no ‘exemption’ laws at the time, planting or possessing cannabis seeds was still a ‘general intent crime’ in California which translates to ‘why you did what you did’ becoming an irrelevant and inadmissible question during trial unless a judge specifically allows such a ‘defense’ and generally judges do not allow any such testimony or evidence unless the prosecution is asking for such trying to show your intent to commit said ’crime’.
I didn’t know this ’general intent crime’ info at the time so imagine my surprise when being told I wasn’t going to be allowed to tell the jury why I did what I did after planting 20,000 cannabis seeds because it was deemed irrelevant and inadmissible and that the only relevant questions during trial would be ’did you posses cannabis seeds?’ and ’did you plants said seeds?’.
We had purposely decided on doing this action in Madera county California because of its tradition of farming and ’conservative’ general population etc including an infamous ’hanging judge’ with respect to cannabis ’crimes’ according to his long standing reputation.
I refused to disqualify any potential jury member and yet it still took 80 interviews in the jury selection process before the prosecution found the 12 he thought would for sure convict.
Opening and closing arguments were the only times during the five day trial that I was allowed to talk uninterrupted by the judge, otherwise I was gaveled into irrelevance and inadmissibility probably 100 times during the trial.
Whenever I would attempt to tell the jury why I did what I did I would get about a sentence or two out before the judge’s gavel would come slamming down to tell me to stop and tell the jury to disregard.
It seemed appropriate in closing to just keep it short and to the point so I simply told the jury that I was there abiding by my conscience and could only hope that they were there to do the same whether they decided to vote guilty or not.
In the jury instructions the judge made clear that there was no room for any verdict but guilty and that the jury must uphold the law. The judge went on to tell the jury that their only responsibility here was to determine if there was possession and cultivation of ’marijuana’ seeds and that because said activities have been admitted to (even video taped), they had to find ‘guilty’.
The jury was in deliberation an hour or two and then returned with a unanimous not guilty verdict.
The judge did not do the traditional ‘thanking the jury for their service’, instead he tore of his black robe right there in court and threw it hard onto his thrown while stating that the case was dismissed and then went storming out through his back door.
I’m not recommending that anyone do ‘civil disobedience’ and end up a ’defendant’ in a criminal trial (in fact after living through such I learned that for sure if at all possible one is better positioned as a plaintiff for many reasons lol), the point I’m trying to make is that if laws are illegitimate they must be challenged by the people (not the lawyers) in the courts or they simply become the new standard.

 

[Polk]

I have definitely heard of the EPA cracking down on tomato growers who were selling or giving away tomatoes.

Try it with lemonade stands. You have this nice lemon tree and decide to sell lemonade at a lemonade stand in your own front yard. What result? We all know. It's done all the time.

Start growing some beautiful foxglove plants, or belladonna. No limit on those. But you harvest the leaves process them and sell them. Now what happens? Clue, it's the death penalty.

Maybe you missed the question...this question goes to your own use outside of commerce.

Even though I disagree with the decision, SCOTUS has already ruled on the subject and stated you do not have the right to grow an illegal plant for your own consumption.

Gonzales v. Raich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Moreover, you don't really have the right to show a legal plant for your consumption either, in certain circumstances (see Wickard v. Filburn).

 

[chikenwing]

I have definitely heard of the EPA cracking down on tomato growers who were selling or giving away tomatoes.

Try it with lemonade stands. You have this nice lemon tree and decide to sell lemonade at a lemonade stand in your own front yard. What result? We all know. It's done all the time.

Start growing some beautiful foxglove plants, or belladonna. No limit on those. But you harvest the leaves process them and sell them. Now what happens? Clue, it's the death penalty.

Maybe you missed the question...this question goes to your own use outside of commerce.

That might be because there is no such thing as having 200 pot plants for individual use. If you think about it, you can see the fallacy of someone being allowed to grow marijuana for their own use. Suppose pot was taxed, heavily taxed, the state needs the money. Every pot plant grown in someone's back yard is a count of tax evasion. If you share, its tax evasion. I know how it works in California where medical marijuana is legal. Home grown pot has to be given to (given understand what that means) a dispensary. It's illegal to sell or give it away. The dispensary sells it and collects the tax. Incidentally making a profit off the sales that they don't have to share back. That's why so many legitimate dispensaries are now cartel owned.

Home grown pot really won't keep people out of prison. It won't even reduce a sentence. It just won't be breaking marijuana laws, it will be for breaking tax laws.

Not true at all,you can brew several hundred gals of beer per legal drinking age for every person in a house hold,free of taxation and penalty of law,same thing.

 

[DNAprotection]

Maybe you missed the question...this question goes to your own use outside of commerce.

Even though I disagree with the decision, SCOTUS has already ruled on the subject and stated you do not have the right to grow an illegal plant for your own consumption.

Gonzales v. Raich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Moreover, you don't really have the right to show a legal plant for your consumption either, in certain circumstances (see Wickard v. Filburn).

Laws come from legislative bodies and executive bodies and from the other most important place, the judicial branch.
The judicial branch is our most directly accessible way to check and balance whats going on if we think somehow that whatever is going on is wrongly imposing on our ’unalienable rights’.
To leave such questions to lawyers or corporations and or congress or even ’your favorite political organization’s’ that lobby on ‘your’ behalf etc is imo a suckers game that is in part employed to keep us all out of court where we would be otherwise posing the more root/fundamental questions that could have a real effect on our common circumstances.
Hard to imagine that with all the complaints folks seem to have these days about everything, the courts aren’t swamped with armies of self litigating plaintiffs.
As long as your income isn’t above a certain amount the gov (tax dollars actually doing something possibly worth your sweat) foots the bill for filling etc and as much as people write on this internet, why not be writing briefs for court?
Do folks seriously believe that personal responsibility for what is and what will be in terms of ‘laws’ begins and ends with checking a box on a ballot or writing a legislator or posting opinions on a thread in a forum?
Many have fought and died in what they believed was an effort to make sure we either had our unalienable rights or at least had access to make a case for reestablishing such in the event that our circumstances should call for it and so it seems not to great a sacrifice imo that we at least spend some time in court fighting for what others gave their all for.
Every time I go to court I learn more, but the one thing that becomes more and more apparent every time is that if more cases were posing the questions then the outcome might be different and that even if the outcomes remained consistent, the public discussion would at least be naturally reframed to include the fundamental questions being asked in the courts.
In stead for the most part we have relegated the courts to the service of and flooded with ‘ambulance chasers’ and or as a means of monetary compensation when we feel we deserve such.

 

[chikenwing]

The tax issue is not really true.

Alcohol is taxed yet people can and do make beer , wine and spirits for personal consumption because there is an exemption.

So you really think that people will be able to grow backyards of pot plants? Making beer, wine and spirits isn't easy, and making good alcohol products is even harder yet. It's also expensive. There is no comparison to pot growing.

Actually it is pretty easy to make a good beer or wine at home. I've been doing it for years.

And if people want to grow pot I have no problem with it. I don't smoke pot but I don't really care if people do. it's one of the most benign drugs around.

I brew beer all the time its easy,my red ale is great!! you want to grow a few plants at home for yourself,have at it.The gov is beyond stupid on this.

 

[DNAprotection]

So you really think that people will be able to grow backyards of pot plants? Making beer, wine and spirits isn't easy, and making good alcohol products is even harder yet. It's also expensive. There is no comparison to pot growing.

Actually it is pretty easy to make a good beer or wine at home. I've been doing it for years.

And if people want to grow pot I have no problem with it. I don't smoke pot but I don't really care if people do. it's one of the most benign drugs around.

I brew beer all the time its easy,my red ale is great!! you want to grow a few plants at home for yourself,have at it.The gov is beyond stupid on this.

I totally agree, but can we really just write it off to gov's stupidity?
Isn't it just natural for corporate interests to lobby for such stupidity?
And isn't it maybe the highlight of 'stupidity' that we have a court system that could be employed to trump the corporate gov's stupidity in areas such as these if we just engaged it in more numbers for such purposes?

 

[DNAprotection]

So far folks have offered reasons why the judges opinion in the thread starting post here is inconsistent with federal case law, but the question posed by this thread is how does the judge come to such a definite conclusion about 'y'our tomato rights?

“Additionally, I want to address the analogy of growing tomatoes. Obviously an ordinance which declares growing more than X number of tomato plants outdoors in plain view to be a nuisance would be unconstitutional, That’s certain.
But I’ve never heard of a tomato gardener growing tomatoes for his or her own consumption being killed during a tomato robbery. Or of a tomato robber being killed in the act of stealing tomatoes.
Cultivation of marijuana is a crime, to begin with, just like cultivating cocoa plants or opium poppies.
However, unlike those offenses, and unlike growing tomatoes, or like growing tomatoes, rather, the people of this state have decided that there needs to be an exemption to this criminal statute to protect legitimate medical marijuana users.”

How does the judge reach this constitutional conclusion about tomato growing?

 

[DNAprotection]

Imagine the opportunity cannabis has the potential to provide Monsanto et al in their effort to control seeds.
What better way to begin the process of all seeds needing to be gov approved than to start with a species that is already illegal?
If we had fought in court for our self evident unalienable rights to posses and plant seeds when gov first began to impose on these rights we wouldn't be waiting for congress to further harm us in this area by way of 'legalization' and whatever that ends up meaning after the smoke clears.
Its never to late to stand up and fight for whats right until we no longer recognize what is right.

Monsanto’s Patents on Life

By Katherine Paul, Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association, Feb. 27, 2013

http://www.organicconsumers.org/arti...icle_27105.cfm

Excerpt:

"The real issue is this: Why have we surrendered control over something so basic to human survival as seeds? Why have we bought into the biotech industry’s program, which pushes a few monoculture commodity crops, when history and science have proven that seed biodiversity is essential for growing crops capable of surviving severe climate conditions, such as drought and floods?"

 

[DNAprotection]

Thrilled and encouraged about the votes in the poll here, but I'm a bit perplexed and even more so troubled at the seeming lack of interest/response to the questions posed by this threads topic, especially when compared to the 'legalize it' thread topic or even the gun threads in that even in the most extreme scenarios of restrictions of certain rights, for example guns not allowed to the general public etc, one could conceivably live on if one had enough food and general necessities etc, but if all your supplies are dependent upon the legalities of being forced to purchase such necessities, isn't that a little more oppressive than the worse case gun laws scenario?

When gov gets away with regulating any plant into effectively being prohibited for what ever reason (because of the precedent the 'reason' becomes somewhat irrelevant) then they can reach for any plant species and with the corporate push to protect 'intellectual property patents' in bioengineering and with no laws conversely protecting naturally occurring species of plants from being genetically 'polluted' by the biotech industry its not hard to imagine where all this ends up if we have no unalienable rights to posses, plant and cultivate seeds into meeting the demands of our basic needs.

Doesn't this seem like it should be an issue of foremost importance to ourselves and our offspring?...or at least as urgent as any other topics generally being discussed?

Not claiming I'm not 'crazy' if some folks here think such, but do ya really think my views on this topic are crazy?

 

[DNAprotection]

There are basically two ways to deal with illegitimate laws, one way is to be a plaintiff before you become a defendant, but another way is to end up a defendant and tell the jury the truth in hopes they will be more sensible than gov etc...

Raw Milk Co-Op Farmer Acquitted Through Jury Nullification » Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance || Good Vibes Promotions

Excerpt:
" Luckily this jury was informed about the process of jury nullification, and their legal right to rule in favor of the accused for breaking unjust laws."

 

[Wry Catcher]

Maybe you missed the question...this question goes to your own use outside of commerce.

That might be because there is no such thing as having 200 pot plants for individual use. If you think about it, you can see the fallacy of someone being allowed to grow marijuana for their own use. Suppose pot was taxed, heavily taxed, the state needs the money. Every pot plant grown in someone's back yard is a count of tax evasion. If you share, its tax evasion. I know how it works in California where medical marijuana is legal. Home grown pot has to be given to (given understand what that means) a dispensary. It's illegal to sell or give it away. The dispensary sells it and collects the tax. Incidentally making a profit off the sales that they don't have to share back. That's why so many legitimate dispensaries are now cartel owned.

Home grown pot really won't keep people out of prison. It won't even reduce a sentence. It just won't be breaking marijuana laws, it will be for breaking tax laws.

The tax issue is not really true.

Alcohol is taxed yet people can and do make beer , wine and spirits for personal consumption because there is an exemption.

Cultivation of MJ in CA can be charged as a felony, possession for sale is a felony. As of January 1, 2011, possessing no more than one ounce or 28.5 grams of marijuana is an infraction, punishable by a maximum fine of $100. See CA Health & Safety Code 11357 (b)