Simple: recreational use just doesn’t matter. If somebody really and truly wastes their life feeding an addiction all day every day, that’s up to them, and chances are they’re already doing it. Maybe with illegal pot, maybe with legal alternatives like alcohol. Maybe with something totally unrelated like video games, internet porn, or whatever. But pot itself isn’t the problem with people like this – it’s about as addictive as caffeine. Only a handful of people will actually abuse pot to the point of it affecting their daily lives.

And heck, I’d rather see a bunch of people throwing their lives away to pot than alcohol. At least the high folks are fairly safe to be around.

Additionally, in places where cannabis has been legalized or decriminalized, use hasn’t skyrocketed. Depending on your source, you can find “proof” that use has gone up or that it’s gone down, but no studies even hint that the more 420-friendly nations have had concerning societal problems due to cannabis being more available and accepted.

So if we accept that recreational use is no big deal, then we still have one question: why not just be happy with medical cannabis laws?

Easy answers:

• The federal government is full of SHIT on this issue and won’t allow cannabis to be rescheduled, so medical laws are still at odds with the federal government – which means places like Alex’s home can cite federal law to avoid dosing a person who could truly benefit.
• Along the same lines, the government will push fake therapies on us like Marinol: a synthetic, pure THC pill which costs MORE than black-market cannabis, and lacks CBD, CBN, and other extremely beneficial cannabinoids! THC by itself is just unpleasant from what I’ve heard, and even the super-high-THC strains of cannabis still have some amount of the other cannabinoids. To put it another way, if nature offers us the whole plant, the government has no right to try and push synthetics that only have one small piece of that plant unless very clear and obvious evidence shows the other components are dangerous. (So far, the only cannabinoid anybody is actually afraid of is THC, and this plant has been with us since the dawn of man)
• Medical cannabis laws have been considered a joke by so many that some states are really cracking down – deciding who is “sick enough” to get medical cannabis. Even here in Oregon, we couldn’t have gotten Alex on the OMMP (Oregon Medical Marijuana Program) without his seizure disorder. Intense self-injurious behaviors wouldn’t be enough.
• In states where cannabis is now legal, a person in need can get a small amount of cannabis from a friend (or in CO grow their own) and try it THAT VERY DAY. We didn’t have that option – it took weeks to get an appointment, get approval from the doctor, and get a dose to try out. It’s impossible to say for sure, but we feel those weeks could have made a huge difference in terms of figuring out the right strain and dosing if we’d had better options like somebody in CO might have.
• We’ve given the government time to accept medical use, and they keep saying, “hell no”. Full legalization in CO and WA has forced a new conversation to take place, and the more states that force this conversation, the more likely kids like Alex will have a new option.

So whether it’s 2014 or 2016, if you live in a state that puts legalization on the ballot, please remember that legalizing can be of tremendous value to medical users, especially in states where medical laws are jumbled and confusing, or where patients are left with almost no guidance on the issue.

And for the skeptics: you pay for a pee test and I’ll take it. A few people somehow actually think Alex’s story is a front to get me high. It’s appalling, but I guess that’s what happens with nearly a century of propaganda against cannabis.

It’s hard to say that the tincture alone is responsible for his behavior, because they’ve reported a better mood at his home as well. But it’s also very unlikely that it’s just coincidence. While his overall mood has been better, we’ve now seen two or three situations in the recent visits where Alex started out unhappy and hitting, and turned calm and happy within an hour or so of the tincture administration.

Of course, since we can only dose him when he visits, we can only guess at what might happen if he could get this in his system regularly.

Even more unfortunately, our grower is moving out of the state within the next six months, showing us once again what a nightmare our restricted medical laws currently are. We’ll have to deal with setting up a new grower, and that is in addition to the new laws which make it a $250 a year expense to keep our OMMP card and name a grower.

The silver lining of all this is that our nation, and the west coast in particular, seems to finally be realizing the benefits of cannabis and the problems with prohibition. Oregon may have two pro-cannabis initiatives on the ballot this November. Colorado will definitely vote on legalization, and looks fairly likely to pass it: the Colorado democratic party officially supports legalization!

Here’s hoping 2012 is a better election year for everybody’s favorite herb. It won’t just help recreational users; the people who need it most, who have tried dozens of other medications and just need some pain relief, would benefit greatly from full legalization.

People throughout the world need to ask themselves:

• Why is it we make an addict’s compulsion illegal instead of treating the problem properly?
• Why not spend our money treating people instead of putting them in jail?
• Why not regulate the supply of dangerous drugs, like we do with alcohol and tobacco?
  • Meth would never be as dangerous as it is without prohibition — it’s being made in more dangerous ways each time we shut one down
  • Look at the dangers of K2, or “fake pot” some time. That has actual dangers associated with it, and would not exist if pot were legalized — it was created to legally get a pot-like high!
• Why not sell and tax the drugs like we do alcohol and cigarettes?

Sure, we need gargantuan warning signs, and perhaps even regular consultations for people who voluntarily choose heroin and the like. Yes, we need safeguards in place. But there is absolutely nothing good about prohibiting drugs. Ron Paul has the balls to say this to the American people. None of the other candidates does (though Gary Johnson would at least talk about cannabis). Whether the people like what they hear or not, they will hear it if Paul gets the nomination. Some of them will have no choice but to consider it. Some people will convert, because enough thought on the matter and we realize prohibition is just wrong, period.

I know it’s tough to consider legalizing all drugs, but everybody should at least think it through. In the end, cannabis is really the one we need to get off the controlled substances act to help kids like Alex. Decriminalizing the rest would, in my opinion, help the country and help countless addicts, but they are not my priority right now. If cannabis gets to Alex regularly, I’ll change my focus.

There was a wonderful quote somewhere out there about the numbers being “misleading”. The claim is that during the time since Portugal decriminalized, the U.S. had also seen a reduction in drug abuse and needle-sharing HIV infections. Taking this quote as a fact, why would the U.S. bother to tax and legalize marijuana?

Maybe because:

• We have 25% of the world’s prisoners, yet only 5% of the world population
• We spend billions a year supporting the DEA’s efforts to continue not cutting down on drug use and abuse
• Taxing marijuana would increase revenue no matter how you look at it
• Allowing hemp production would be beneficial in more ways than I can list (biofuel, food, environmentally-friendly paper, …)
• Spending money lying about the dangers of pot makes a lot less sense than spending money to help people legitimately addicted
• Last, and possibly the most obvious thing I’ve ever felt like I had to spell out: even if decriminalization wasn’t an amazing success, it clearly was not a failure! You can’t bash a system that didn’t make things worse, people!

And honestly, does nobody remember how bad the 20s were? The mafia during the alcohol prohibition in the 1920s made a great deal of money VIA BOOTLEGGING. Alcohol prohibition funded criminal activity. Why do people really think pot is any different in this regard?

I’ve been reading a lot about prop 19, and how various people think it needs to wait another two years to get some refinements. Generally speaking, it’s too strict, and takes away more freedom than it gives. Some of the anti-prop-19 propaganda is below — some is fact, some is exaggerated, and some (I believe) is completely made up:

• Prop 19 imposes bigger penalties for minors caught smoking than CA has today
• It won’t actually generate much revenue for the state, and what revenue it does generate will not likely go to the places money is needed
• Medical smokers won’t be allowed to smoke around minors, or in public
• More people will be arrested than today due to the decriminalization – right now being caught with a small amount of marijuana is just a $100 fine, not an arrest
• It won’t actually end the war on drugs, because it’ll still be federally illegal
• Hard-working medicinal growers will lose tons of money and possibly even end up with no income
• It’s far too much red tape to get licensed
• The big companies will take control of the cannabis industry, resulting in low-quality, mass-produced weed
• If we vote yes on 19 and it sucks, we can’t fix it ever
• And so on…

Side note: isn’t it funny how many “cannabis friendly” people are speaking out against prop 19 now? Perhaps they happen to be in the group of black-market growers and dealers who “generously” supply medicine to patients… at a price that, ounce for ounce, beats gold

I disagree

Think about these points before you get too focused on the fact that, yes, prop 19 has some flaws:

If it can’t pass during an economic crisis, when even a tiny tax is so very necessary, what are the odds it’ll pass if the state is doing better in two years? If the recession gets better in the next two years, voters on the fence won’t see taxation of cannabis as being nearly as big a benefit. This is important, because cannabis and hemp could help California immensely over the long run — but people are more likely to think about the future when their short-term outlook is bleak.

If we remove the restrictive legalese from prop 19, and don’t have stiff penalties for selling to minors, will the fence sitters even consider voting “yes”? Doubtful. As it is, prop 19 is actually really good for people who want kids off pot. Personally I don’t care what a 19-year-old does with pot, but I can see the tough battle prop 19 would have had if it had stated that anybody over 12 could smoke marijuana anywhere, anytime.

Marijuana has been used for thousands of years, yet government propaganda has convinced us for generations that it’s an incredibly dangerous substance. You can bet whatever happens to prop 19, the federal government is going to take its drug war to the next level. If 19 doesn’t pass, we’re looking at many more years of extremely powerful lies funded by an incredibly wealthy nation, and no ground to stand on. No legalization effort means no proof of how safe (and beneficial) marijuana and hemp really are.

The federal prohibition will not end until most of the states make a stand. California is in a unique position to do so this year. Other liberal states would likely follow California’s example, but they won’t be as likely to succeed if California fails! The OCTA fell miles short of its goal this year – imagine how much tougher it’ll be in 2012 trying to gather signatures knowing that CA got it on the ballot and still failed.

The black market maintains control as long as we allow it. Yes, having one state legalize weed won’t stop the black market. It will, however, be the first step toward doing so. You can’t stop the black market entirely without a lot of time, not even for a product as cheap to grow as cannabis. Even if the U.S. fully legalized it, there would still be people supplying it to countries where it remains illegal. The point is that the black market loses control eventually, and this year could be the start of that.

And last, hemp production by itself is worth your vote. That article is a wonderful resource for discussing the merits of hemp, and has a lot of really good facts that can be verified. Hemp’s illegal status has a lot to do with the perceived need to keep “drugs” off the streets. Get cannabis legalized, and enjoy the incredible benefits of hemp: food, fuel, paper, and more!

Decriminalization?

And all this talk of decriminalization being better than legalization – I’m half convinced the proponents of keeping it illegal are just black-market cronies or something.

If we stick with decriminalization as a “good enough” situation, how will people in hospitals and other state run facilities ever benefit from marijuana use? How will proper research ever be done? How will we end medical users’ rights from being trampled on in the workplace?

Decriminalization is a small step in the right direction, but certainly not the final chapter… unless you’re growing a plant that makes you more money than any other crop on earth.

Decriminalization keeps the drug illegal. It’s not allowing you to carry ten pounds of marijuana and donate it to a hospital. It’s not allowing big companies to grow cannabis to cultivate hemp. It’s not allowing scientists to do real, well-funded research. In my son’s case, it keeps his institution from being allowed to give him the one medicine that shows promise.

Decriminalization doesn’t work for true freedom, and that’s what this country is supposed to be about.

VOTE YES!

Tell your friends. Educate your peers. Spread the word. Cannabis isn’t evil. Let’s give real scientists a chance to prove it.

Don’t vote with the ignorant, and don’t vote with the black market. Vote yes, and give responsible adults a chance to prove they are just that.