The things that go through my head

That is the question that popped into my head as I read yet another scandalous story about a celebrity that enjoys marijuana. This time it was one of the actors in the Harry Potter series, 19 year old Jamie Waylett who was growing it. Smart fellow, that Jamie Waylett. It is no secret to readers of this blog that I think the marijuana laws are useless and stupid and should be immediately repealed. However, I wrote this post because of the wording of the article. Just check this out:

Jamie Waylett pleaded guilty to growing the drug during a hearing Thursday at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

Excuse me, but how do you go about growing a drug? That’s like telling a barley farmer that they are growing beer. You grow plants, not drugs. But since the only processing that marijuana requires is that the buds get dried after they get harvested, it is understandable why some people would think that this is appropriate language. I know that it takes a lot to go from barley to beer bottle but marijuana is pretty much done once the buds are clipped and dried.

I suppose the real problem is that people think that marijuana is a drug. Sure it has psycho-active effects but is it a drug? I don’t think so.

WARNING: Following post contains terrible grammar but I don’t care enough to re-write it for the umpteenth time.

Obama has already proven himself to be enough of a tool by attempting to hide the torture photos. For more on Obama’s intense stupidity and how he gets off the hook for being a misogynist asshat, I recommend reading Dr. Violet Socks. But he has really gone and stepped in it now! A very good friend of mine sent me an email linking to this article on Huff Po entitled “Something you’d like”.

As he is a fellow drug policy reformer, I figured that perhaps it was an article about Mr. President Obama handing out joints at a local medical marijuana dispensary. Or maybe he was releasing all of the drug war prisoners out of jail and immediately erasing all their criminal records. I would even settle for a youtube of Arnold Schwarzenegger on CNN demanding that his favorite plant be recognized as the medicine that it is.

A marijuana plant in every pot!

But alas, I clicked the link and all I got was the same old tepid lukewarm BS baby-steps towards drug policy reform that we have seen before and will see again. The Governator wants to talk about drug policy. Big deal. What is there to talk about? The drug war is a failure. We already know that.

One of the President’s Henchmen told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to get away from the idea that the U.S. is fighting a “war on drugs.” So what? Does he actually want to quit fighting the war on drugs or does he want to win the propaganda war? Should we call it a disagreement on drugs instead while Mexico gets torn up by more violence and more people rot in jail for smoking a plant?

Call me cranky and demanding all you want, but I want, expect and demand a lot more before I start strewing rose-petals in the path of all these big-talk, do-nothing politicians. Kerlikowske even states outright that he doesn’t support efforts to legalize drugs. He’s a fracking tool, I tell you! A tool of the patriarchy as well as a tool of the racist, classist war on some people who use some drugs. Obama found his number in the Big Book of Drug Warriors. Obama wants to spend even more money on drug enforcement than Bush, if Huff Po is to be believed. (Huff Po had Jim Carey write a science article, so their credibility is immediately suspect.) Norm Stamper says repeal drug prohibition so at least Huff Po got one thing right.

I won’t be happy until everyone can grow, sell or share whatever plant they want without the government’s interference. Anything less than that is bupkis.

Is it a full moon or something?  I don’t know how else to explain the extreme stupid reefer madness confronting me thanks to my glowing black laptop.  First, there is the story of a disabled woman living in British Columbia that is being threatened with eviction because she smokes medicinal marijuana.  It makes me sick to think of the anxiety she is going through, worrying about having a decent place to live just because she smokes pot.  Marylin Holston lives in an apartment in Vacouver and uses marijuana to help her deal with her pain.  She is a double amputee that uses a wheelchair and has diabetes.  She has lived in her apartment for eight years.  When she notified the management that she had been prescribed medicinal pot by her doctor, she was given her eviction notice.

Then we have this story about a mother charged with child endangerment for letting her friend blow pot smoke in her childs’ face.  I will grant you that this was not a very smart thing to do but it doesn’t deserve the involvement of the law.  I mean jeez my parents let me sip some alcohol when I was a young child and nobody called social services.  I guess they were smart enough not to film it.  Charging the woman with child endangerment is just too much.  How was the child in danger?   Oh no!  The kid got the munchies. It just goes to show that most people do not realize how completely harmless cannabis really is thanks to all the reefer madness propaganda people are exposed to.

How did they accomplish this task? Easy, by putting a really stupid headline on this article: Grow-op produced medicine, not pot, Appeal Court hears.

First of all, pot is medicine. There are reams of information out there that proves this indisputable fact. The federal government was forced to recognize the medical efficacy of pot, thanks to hard-won court battles.  As a result, Canada has a terribly run medical marijuana program.  There are currently 2812 Canadians that have permission from the federal government to consume marijuana for their medical conditions.  The idea that there are only 2812 people in Canada that benefit from medicinal cannabis makes me laugh.  As if.  You should be able to get medical pot for your menstrual cramps or headache or just because you feel like it.

Then we have the issue of the reefer madness term grow-op.  It’s a weaselly bit of propaganda to call a greenhouse full of plants a grow-op and completely ridiculous.  The headline should have read: Greenhouse produced medicinal cannabis,  growers face jailtime, taxpayers foot the bill.  It would have been a little more honest.  But I don’t expect honesty from the Star Phoenix.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again.  Nobody should go to jail for smoking, growing or selling the wrong plants.

I suppose it’s understandable when people, such as Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon, look down their nose with disdain at all those potty-mouthed legalization advocates. I suppose it’s also understandable that she might, like me, be a bit uncomfortable with the antics of some legalization advocates. I have expressed misgivings about Marc Emery smoking up in front of police stations and showing off his gigantic bong in every photo opportunity that he gets. I sometimes wish that the face of the pro-legalization movement didn’t trigger all the prejudices of narrow-minded people. But you know what? At least they said and did something, unlike everybody else, who sat on their butts while the US incarceration rate sky-rocketed, while disproportionate numbers of poor and black people were targeted, while an incredibly useful plant was demonized and while no-knock raids of medical cannabis compassion clubs took place. If it wasn’t for those “stoners”, nobody would have done or said a thing.

Not only that, but the ridiculous prejudice against “stoners” by even so-called progressive liberal bloggers should give one pause. If they participate in the stigmatization of cannabis users themselves, are they really that progressive? Hmmm.

This train of thought is similar to the following:

“Poverty sucks but I sure can’t stand poor people. They smell so bad and never have any money and they are so uneducated. If only they would quit being poor and go away, things would be so much better!”

I say when you see a crowd of legalization advocates smoking up in public at a rally, you should understand why it’s a valuable action to take. If we decide to sit back and do nothing at all, nothing will ever change. People need to see that smoking pot is no big deal and nothing to freak out over. The more people see this relatively harmless action, the less likely they are to freak out about it.

If you do not use cannabis and never will, good for you. You should still care about this issue. Your tax dollars are being pissed away jailing producers sellers and consumers of a beneficial plant.

By the way, the Global Marijuana March is coming up. It will be a super swell time, full of people smoking up publicly and proudly.

Drew Carey does a great job covering the topic of medical marijuana. He talks about the harsh penalties being handed down to people that grow it for the people that it can help and the raids carried out by the Drug Enforcement Agency in the United States. Drew interviews a doctor put on house arrest for the crime of helping a minor treat his pain caused by cancer. Even though he was helped immensely by his use of medicinal cannabis, the federal government only cared that his patient was a minor. The feds are suffering from illogical reefer madness and they need to smarten up on this issue.

It reminds me of how much I used to like the Drew Carey show. It must have gotten canceled years ago.

Blogging is such a mixed bag sometimes. I love to write and I love feedback on my writing, even if it’s just the occasional comment from the three or four people besides me that actually care about this blog. If you get a following on a blog that you update regularly, after a while you can feel like you have to produce something every single day, even if you would rather splash around in the mud puddles or clean the house or fret about a major life change. I recognize that I love it when people bug me to update the blog because it means that somebody actually cares about what I have to say. But when I don’t want to blog it feels like such a chore. A very strange combination of factors conspired to keep me from blogging for the past few weeks. The fact that I bought a new laptop and I have had the worst case of writers’ block because I am not used to it. I realize that this makes me a very strange cookie and that I should not admit to being this weird on a blog under my real name.

That’s another thing about blogging that sucks. I am continually reminded by the so-called “real world” that everything I put on this blog is accessible to the whole world FOREVER! And that is such a bad, horrible terrible thing. I can’t think of one good, sane reason to care about being held responsible for the things that I say. I stand by them, and if I am serious about that, I should post my thoughts under my real name, by gum. So that’s exactly what I do.

I say that and I mean that, but I can’t help fearing that I engage in a little bit of self-censorship on this blog. There are many times when I think “Can’t write about that, I don’t want everybody to know that!”

Anyway, what has finally spurred me to give up my lame writers’ block excuse is the absolutely ridiculous reefer madness being displayed by the dead tree media of late. First we have this lame dog pile dumped into the Star Phoenix. The dripping disdain for medical cannabis is apparent in the tone of the article and the fact that the editorialists couldn’t even bother to get their facts straight about this issue. They declare that if only that user of “doobies” had just respected the owners’ request to move, there would have been no problem. If only those pesky groups that are continually discriminated against would just go away and quit demanding their rights and to be treated with respect, everything would be peachy keen and smell of roses. As if! This line of thinking brings up a few questions that I think everybody should think very deeply about, before getting defensive and dismissing everything that I have to say.

Why do people get so upset about the idea of cigarette smokers sharing their spaces with cannabis users? I simply do no understand why it is justifiable to punish medical cannabis users in this way. It makes no sense. Cannabis smoke is far less dangerous than tobacco smoke. There is more pollution and second hand smoke being spewed out the back-end of cars than by even the largest group of cannabis smokers. Why the double standard? I can already hear the response from the reefer madness indoctrinated crowd. “But Tanya, marijuana is illegal!” It is very true that people have fought a constant uphill battle to have the well-documented and extensive medical use of cannabis recognized and respected. There was never an excuse for the government to punish people for growing plants. It’s absolute bullocks and inexcusable. There should never have even been a need to prove the medical use of cannabis for it to be allowed to be used legally by people that need it.

This is my long-winded rambling way of saying that there is no excuse for the ridiculous drug laws. Nothing good has come of imprisoning millions of harmless drug offenders, the majority of whom are in prison related to cannabis offenses. Just put that in your pipe and smoke it. The government spends all this time and money punishing people for using the wrong drugs and we have literally nothing to show for it. Unless you consider escalating rates of drug use and HIV infections an accomplishment.

If I get around to writing a proper response to this sewage published in the Star Phoenix, I will be sure to publish it here. I think it’s time for a letter to the editor.

But wait! The reefer madness propaganda machine is just getting started. We get to hear my main man Obama mocking the people who responded to his request for feedback on his site and demanded that cannabis be taxed and regulated. Apparently, putting a stop to jailing people for their personal drug habits is beyond the pale for the Grope and Flail * and simply must be mocked and disdained with witty remarks about wondering why anybody would think that President Obama would want to legalize the demon weed. But they made a grave mistake by dismissing the 53% of Canadians that think cannabis should be legalized. What gives Globe and Mail the right to do that? The politicians and the media are both out of touch with what the people really want.

* To use Canadian Cynics’ terminology.

From this article about how legalizing drugs will be BAD, comes the following comeback.

As usual the conservative commentators are way behind the 8 ball on this one. The facts is that the marijuana industry in BC is now probably our largest industry since forestry and tourism have hit the skids. Maybe we should legalize it, but only when the economy has recovered. We can’t afford to right now. We need the fiscal stimulus of building new prisons to house all the criminals, we need to hire lots more cops to save us from ourselves, and think of all the cops, lawyers, judges and prison guards out of a job if marijuana were legal. For Gods sake, even the Hells Angels and all the other gangs would be left with little to do when they could no longer sell a weed for $3000 a pound. Legalize marijuana? Hell no, we can’t afford to!

It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that the government is imposing legislation to crack down on crime by going after marijuana growers. Click here for reefer madness propaganda. Let me tell you what will happen if we allow the knobs in charge to get away with it.

1. The price of marijuana will increase.
2. There will be even more marijuana bust pr0n all over the news. We will be treated to more grow-op photo-ops, complete with wads of cash and garbage bags over-flowing with weed. Maybe there will be a couple grams of meth to really make the media salivate. The RCs will have fun parading their ill-gotten gains before the camera and assure the public that their jobs are actually faithful.
3. The crime rate will increase as the drug trade becomes even more profitable.

Cracking down on crime this way is a recipe for failure.

I have done my best to refrain from posting about this Michael Phelps bong story as it is  a complete waste of my time.   I know that everybody expects me to care about the big pot kerfuffle because it involves my favorite plant.  But why is the fact that a famous athlete smoked pot even a story? Why does anybody care?  In a sensible world, the fact of an athlete inhaling the burning fumes from a medicinal herb would hardly raise an eyebrow.  Never forget, that cannabis is the safest medically active substance know to humankind.  That not a single person has ever ingested enough cannabis to die of an overdose.  Realize that cannabis in no way has the negative health outcomes of many readily available and used over-the-counter drugs such as Tylenol or recreational drugs like alcohol.  Right now, somewhere on Planet Earth, or while you read my world famous Friday 4:20 series, a group of teachers are throwing back brewskis and barley sandwiches like its going out of style. I would never dare to begrudge these fine educators their legal and socially acceptable drug.  I just wish that people would put Michael Phelps “youthful indiscretion” into perspective.

However, as this story has unfolded, I can not help but be amazed at the depths of inanity that the human race can reach.   The first foolish thing was Phelps so-called buddy taking his pic and selling it to a cheesy British tabloid.   I hope that idiot enjoys his money.  I hope that his identity becomes widely known among his circle of friends and they can tell him what I am dying to say.  “Piss off, dick.”  After the pic was released the world went:  OMG PHELPS BONG STONER GOING TO POT LOSER!!11  Once that dust settles and some of the media move on to another user of socially unacceptable drugs A-Rod. But some other media go ballistic.  People speculate about the punishment that Phelps should face for his terrible crime of devoting his life to sports, winning 14 Olympic Gold medals and inhaling the burning fumes of an illegal but relatively harmless plant.  It doesn’t take long for the verdict to be read.  Phelps loses his lucrative Kelloggs’ contract due to “his bad image”.   He gets suspended from competing for three months.

I contemplated boycotting Kelloggs in my own head, as I felt it would be a futile gesture of support at best. But what the hey, I love to jump on a good bandwagon.  I won’t be buying anymore Kelloggs products until they smarten up. If those marketing people had any sense they would put out a Special Edition Kelloggs box with the bong-hitting photo on the front.  After all, you have to be wicked high to enjoy Kelloggs, right?  Put my name on that petition.

I ran across this recap of the Phelps non-story and felt compelled to agree. I can not watch the video, I sure wish I could, so if you are Canadian you have to settle for reading the transcript.  But the worst was yet to come.  You see, eight people have now been arrested in connection with the bong-smoking incident.   Seven charges of possession and one charge of trafficking were laid against the party-goers. It’s pretty hard to believe that smoking pot should be this big of a priority for Sherriff Leon Lott when there are actually real crimes to worry about. You know, rape and murder and assault?  Yeah, you have better things to do.

I mean, how stupid can we really get?  I can’t even believe I’m writing this crap while contemplating taking pictures of me defacing the Raisin Bran box in my cupboard.  How can this even be?

When I started this blog and my Friday 4:20 series, I was hoping to limit my pot-posting to once a week.  So much for that.