For Nearly a Year, Teenagers Have Been Robbing Portland Dispensaries. Then Somebody Shot a Budtender

[TexasTowelie]

Michael Arthur worried he might die on the job.

For almost two years, the 44-year-old father worked as a clerk at Cured Green, a cannabis dispensary tucked in an alleyway behind a small grocery store and teriyaki shop along North Lombard Street.

Arthur's girlfriend, Chiara Ryder, says he grew increasingly fearful of a robbery. Around November, Ryder says, Arthur told her he had seen four young men scoping out the shop late at night.

He ended the conversation with a warning: If I wind up dead, these are the guys who did it.

"It raised the hairs on the back of Michael's neck. It made him afraid for his life," Ryder says. "It wasn't his words. It was the look on his face."

Read more: https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2021/03/03/for-nearly-a-year-teenagers-have-been-robbing-portland-dispensaries-then-somebody-shot-a-budtender/
(Williamette Week)

[captain queeg]

1. Seems like having a cash only business is not a good idea

Why did the politicians not foresee this?

[DFW]

2. Having a cash only business should not carry the death penalty

My wife and I both have credit/debit cards, but we hate them and use cash whenever we can.

We lived next door to a control freak state (East Germany, the "real existing socialism," as they put it), and they drowned in their obsession to know everything each citizen thought and did, and where they were at all times. These days, that can be done with computers that can follow every credit card transaction. I am reminded of that every time I get a call from the States within two minutes of of making a credit card purchase that "does not fit my normal pattern." Just who it is that determines what my "normal pattern" is, I have no idea, and cannot find out.

So, we prefer to use cash. It also gives us an immediate view of what we have, and what we don't. It shouldn't mean that we are easy prey for every pistol-wielding punk that thinks his arsenal gives him the right to treat us like his own personal ATM.

[markie]

3. legalizing

nationwide would go a long way towards alleviating the seriousness... our ignorance and irrational behaviors hold some of the blame

[UpInArms]

4. The republicans are truly the party of death

Blumenauer has been pushing for federal legalization of cannabis for decades. But he reached a milestone in December, when the House passed his legalization bill. The bill died in the then-Republican-controlled Senate. But now, with Democrats in charge, he feels hopeful.