FICRY

You know me, but you may not know you know me.  I am the white-collar stoner. Like millions of my fellow white-collar stoners, when I return home from my Sisyphean nine to five, I smoke a joint.  Not every day.  No, some days I fire up my vaporizer or pull out the old zong bong.  Or sometimes I use a bit of weed-infused olive oil on my salad, or have a bit of weed milk in my tea.  But most days I smoke a joint.  I could opt for one of the many legal post work raison d’etre-s: happy hour, the gym, Xanax, the liquor cabinet, prayer, maybe a combination of these or/plus others.  But I prefer cannabis. My record – criminal, credit, et al. – is without so much as a speeding ticket.  In fact, I believe strongly in the law and that it should be obeyed as it is our contract to each other as members of a society.  And yet, almost every day I break a law that is punishable by everything from modest fines to significant time in prison. Click here to get related stuff from FICRY.com.

This plant, not such a distant relative of the hops that gives pale ales their distinctive and delicious bitter flavor and makes their drinkers a little happier than their stout drinking buddies, nor from the hemp plant that is full of protein and omega 3’s and fights cancer and can be used to make pants and also milk (what!), this plant that relieves pain for cancer patients and inspires great artworks and music, this plant that you can find growing in nature in every single state in this country. Weed is forbidden, forbidden by the law of our people.  And I, for one, want to see it stay that way.  At least for now.

There has been of late a torrent of discussion in the media regarding the legalization of marijuana as a means to grow the economy, especially in California where they could really use the cool billion weed could potentially net them in tax revenue as they budget cut the infrastructure from their public school system.  And while an open, public, sane conversation about cannabis and its use and cultivation is long past it’s due, using the veil of economic stimulus as a Trojan horse for legalizing marijuana is really not a good idea. For more on government interference, Click Here.

The history of marijuana law in the US is long and sordid; (unfortunately) like so many of our laws/’values’ we end up apologizing for later, the path of the legal status of weed through the halls of government in the past century or so has been one dictated by the hermeneutic impasses of race, wealth, religion, gender and timing. Ignorance and prejudice prevents the public from accepting or even rationally discussing the incredible amount of evidence that marijuana is safe if not beneficial and is, at the very least, a much less destructive choice with far fewer negative side effects than many other forms of recreation and/or medication like drinking, or vast amounts of highly addictive synthetic pain killers, or smoking cigarettes, and that most people have smoked pot at least once and that many, many people – many successful and smart people, smoke pot everyday. These are the things we should be talking about when marijuana falls on the House or Senate Floor. And it’s not just because of our ideology, or our dignity.
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The FICRY has made it easy for marijuana legalization advocates to pounce on the opportunity to leverage the promise of increased tax revenue and greatly reduced punishment costs to lure supporters whom, when their pocket book was bulging, were die-hard pot prohibitionists.  What they are asking for, really, is to be taken advantage of.  When we, instead of asking for sensible marijuana laws because they are sensible, allude to weed as a potential panacea to an economic crisis that has its roots in the very heart and soul of the American way of life, we abandon ourselves to the behest of the Oligarch; the plantation owner who considers our rights with regard to quarterly earnings. Marijuana legalization as economic stimulus would cement marijuana as one of the many people’s opiates, used to subdue the masses and fund the empire.

Furthermore, because money would be the impetus behind its legalization, be sure that legislation would favor the corporate-government complex. I don’t know how you get your weed, but I get mine from a good friend I’ve known a long time.  When I go to his house to support his business, we sit down and smoke some marijuana together.  It’s local, it’s free of packaging and it’s incredibly environmentally friendly (indeed it’s actually growing more plants – something very few entrepreneurial endeavors can claim to do). It’s personal, it’s sustainable – it’s permaculture.  Legalization of marijuana would NOT mean that everything will be pretty much the same except for now you can smoke your blunt outside the bar worry-free.  To be sure, the legalization of marijuana will be the commercialization of marijuana – and everything entailed therein.  Small growing operations will be regulated out of operation or remain in clandestine operation as before, while behemoths like Phillip Morris develop large swaths of land into great marijuana fields that are strictly regulated by government officials who coincidentally receive large bundled campaign donations from employees of the aforementioned behemoth. When you want some marijuana, you will go to some place like the liquor store, where you can purchase your weed in perfect little cigarette-like joints that come in perfect little cartons with hip graphic designs on them.  The joints will be complete with mandated THC limits and testing and FDA approved labels and a bunch of extra chemicals to make them a little bit addictive and taste a little sweeter or smoother, and you’ll pay a bill an eighth, of which 60 dollars will go to the government and the other 40 to their friends at Phillip Morris.  You’ll have to take the weed home because it won’t be legal in public. And so they’ll budget in some tax dollars, roughly the same as their making in revenue, to put together a task force to enforce regulations on weed cultivation and use.  And they’ll start cracking down on these rouge gardens and arraigning and jailing people.  And suddenly we’ll all realize that it’s actually worse than before, that we just drew attention to ourselves, that we sold our pastime and our plant to the ledgers of government and big tobacco.

Yes, there needs to be discussion about legalizing marijuana.  Yes, millions of Americans, mostly African Americans, spend years in jail on tax payer money for no real reason at all.  But this plant should be legal because it’s a plant, not because we could tax the hell out of it.  For more on vice and the FICRY, Click here!

FICRY Exclusive Feature, By Anonymous