Jack Herer’s vision of unrestricted cannabis freedom is becoming a
reality as patients escape the drug war by growing their own
Since the end of days was just another day, 2012 may be best remembered as
the beginning of the end of cannabis prohibition. We have a long way to go before we are all
free to choose cannabis, and a long time to wait before Middle Americans look
long enough to feel the pain and see the need.
Sadly, the Cash Hyde story was not what everyone in America was talking
about before everyone was talking about the Newtown horrors.
Mainstreamers don’t go to
cannabis festivals, they don’t watch compelling documentaries like Waiting to Inhale and Hemp and Rule of Law, and they wouldn’t
think to read Marijuana is Safer. While cannabis legalization in Colorado and
in Washington State certainly appeared on mainstream screens many times after
Election Day, the coverage was often reduced to a sound-bite, a pot joke, or a pitched
debate that left viewers sure that there are two sides to every story.
Prohibition propaganda taints us all
The insulation from the truth
has been so deeply installed that it could take generations before the lies and
the misconceptions about cannabis have been cleared from our collective
cultural consciousness. Consider, for
example, this supportive point of
view offered by the new Miss Universe Olivia Culpo, the day after she was
crowned. Ms. Culpo, a native of the progressive
state of Rhode Island, told Huffington Post Live:
I don't think it should
be legalized for recreational purposes, because it's been proven to prevent
people from their full potential and I don't think that's a good thing for
society. If we're trying to move things forward, a drug like marijuana does the
opposite, it will slow things down. But for medical purposes I think it's
great, but for every day? No.
Give the woman an A for effort
and a C for accuracy. Those are better
grades than many cannabis fans would give NORML these days. Ironically, even as the medicinal truth is
coming out, the original freedom fighter for us all is sticking to its charter
that says this fight about marijuana, and marijuana is a smoked
recreational weed. Director Allen
St. Pierre has even called the medicinal movement a sham perpetrated by greedy
enterprisers. How last-century is that?
Mainstreamers, of course, know far less about the true nature of cannabis.
They still live deep within the psychic, social and physical bounds of drug
war prohibition, and work without complaint in unconstitutional environments
where they submit to drug tests to make sure they aren’t using the forbidden
flower. Workplace policies on drugs are
forceful but not the least bit drug free:
Pot is not allowed, not
even on your own time, and certainly not as ‘medicine’. Don’t even ask! Pills are fine as long as you have a
prescription for them. Tobacco breaks
outside? That’s your right. Drinks after work? We’ll see you there...
Negotiated Freedoms
Keeping mainstreamers out of
the loop and in the dark is a long-standing prohibition-era practice that both
sides firmly agree on. Leading reform
groups like the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) insist that the time to engage voters
comes after the terms of reform have
been settled and the baby-step bill is ready for sale and debate on the news shows.
A good example of this incremental
march to freedom can be seen in Massachusetts, a decriminalized state that just
voted to allow the creation of a dispensary system that will serve patients who
are sick enough to qualify. Northampton
lawyer Michael Cutler, a skilled veteran of the movement, recently described
the legal framework to The Boston Globe:
The law allows for 35
outlets in the state’s 14 counties, with at least one per county. How the
distribution works after that is all up to the state Department of Public
Health, which has until May 1 to issue its regulations. Some kind of
competition for licenses could open up in the summer, and by the fall those
decisions could be made. Then the first dispensaries could begin to open by the
winter.
The admirable big picture
vision of the baby-step strategy is that down the road, once the safety of cannabis
is obvious and the commercial frameworks have all be worked out to the
satisfaction of the parties in control, further steps towards liberty will be
taken. In time, they hope, we will all
be free to buy cannabis from any vendor we choose.
Until his death three years ago,
Jack Herer was the aggressive ‘free
means free’ advocate. He had no patience
for negotiated liberties. He would be
delighted to know that as he foretold, true cannabis freedom is unfolding as a matter
of personal choice, in private homes and gardens all over the world.
The Grower Next Door
Private home cultivation is
taking off not just because the government is doing everything in their power
to limit access while they figure out how to control the game, but because increasingly,
cannabis patients feel their choice of medicine is nobody’s business but their
own. The drug war offensive of 2012 drove
millions of patients out west back into the shadows. The ones who went home to grow their own
won’t be coming back.
In Rhode Island patients are
permitted to grow in the privacy of their own residences, so dispensary access
cards won’t be a huge seller when they’re finally made available. RI growers are a passionate, cooperative community, as
evidenced by the nonprofit model developed by Sensi Organic Solutions. SOS empowers financially strapped medical cardholders
by setting them up with donated equipment, soil and clones, and then guiding
them through the first grow. For help
after that newbies can go online or turn to seasoned growers in the SOS network.
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| The classic stealthy Phototron |
Homegrows, especially in urban
areas, can still be a seriously risky undertaking. Growers
are keenly aware that their little gardens are lucrative targets for black
market thieves, and that in most areas cannabis cultivation remains a deeply
misunderstood and socially unacceptable practice. The solution is secrecy, and after more than 40
years of war, cannabis growers know how to hide.
Serving this market are
countless local hydro and grow supply shops, and enterprises like GrowLife,
SuperCloset, and BC Northern Lights. Since
these companies are careful to point out that their products are intended to
make stealthy home cultivation fun and easy only for legal flowers and vegetables, they are free to sell to anyone;
online and in any state.
Naturally, there is no way to
figure the size of the hidden home cultivation market, but it is safe to say
there are private grows all over North America—even in neighborhoods where no
one ever talks about that sort of thing.
If mainstreamers knew who in their midst was doing what with cannabis
and why, they might begin to see the demonized flower in a different light.
Reality in Fiction
With the truth a few clicks away,
the power and the task to reveal this hidden world to mainstreamers is in the
hands of filmmakers who can command the attention of millions. Surprisingly, the less a film is about cannabis, the greater the
potential reach and impact.
Great flicks like Savages and Pineapple Express certainly took the time to show and tell the
truth about the medicinal cannabis community, but most of their viewers were
already pretty far along on that learning curve. Instead, think about movies like Urban Cowboy (1980), Steel Magnolias (1989), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), and The Bridges of Madison County (1995).
To be sure when those classics
were released cannabis was not being used as medicine by those types of
characters. That is no longer the
case. Patients, seniors, substance
abusers, preachers, school teachers, professionals, and neer-do-wells alike are re-discovering
cannabis for all sorts of good reasons.
Film audiences are a savvy bunch and they can tell when they are seeing
the truth in fiction. They can feel it
in the performance, in the honesty of the character, and in the familiarity of
the scene.
Now imagine a 50-something movie
star in a starring role (sympathetic or otherwise) casually flipping open the
door to a grow box hiding in a closet near the kitchen; snipping and hanging a
few colorful flower tops on a line while explaining to a stunned visitor that
the buds will be dried to make tincture…for insomnia…and for hangovers…
Twenty seconds, maybe, but with
power! The power to inform, to awaken,
and the power to help dispel the crazy notions America’s unholy drug war hath
wrought.
