Indifference

It’s a tough thing, indifference. To matter not. To have no effect. The reality is, it’s impossible to have no effect in the world, despite the efforts of others to convince you otherwise. Whether it’s on a personal scale, or one more grand, it’s hard to understand when no one responds in a way that make sense.

Women experience indifference perhaps in a more emotional way than do men, although that may just be the way we perceive it. Men have been raised to be less emotional so they may be just as affected by indifference as are women. The legislature here in Oregon just decided that working Oregonians should be entitled to a few days of sick pay per year. Needless to say, not everyone supported it, and I’m sure when they debate increasing the minimum wage, some will become apoplectic. A spokesperson for a towing company in our area immediately said they’d have to raise their already outrageous prices to deal with it. Another business owner complained that she didn’t want her employees taking advantage of their sick days to play or something like that. She claimed that she would give her employees more if she wasn’t forced into doing so. It was ridiculous. It was like when my parents were divorced and my idiot father told my mother that he’d give her more if she’d let him live. Those were his exact words. Let him live. He was only concerned with his life, not his children, and certainly felt no responsibility for the destruction of our family. Employee benefits aren’t a liberal plot. They simply make sense. And if you have to argue about extending your employees five days of sick time, then maybe you shouldn’t be in business in the first place. And apparently it won’t apply to businesses with less than ten employees, so those folks are out of luck. They still get to work while sick, or lose pay.

The Colorado Supreme Court just ruled that employers can fire workers for cannabis use while not at work. It’s legal there in Colorado, both recreationally and medically, but that doesn’t matter. As long as it’s illegal federally, then everyone is at risk to be fired. In a legal state no less. Never mind the feds have said that legal states are not to be interfered with. How is this ruling in keeping with that decision? Losing one’s job for doing something legal meets the quintessential definition in my view of interference. How could it not?

A court’s indifference potentially opens a door that will ruin even more lives. We have to choose to heal or be employed. We don’t have to choose between having a glass of wine with dinner and gainful employment. Nor do we have to choose between using prescription pain killers when we experience pain and gainful employment. As long as we’re not under the influence in a way that makes our employment risky, our privacy is respected and we still have a job to return to the next day.

Legalization is supposed to mean that people no longer can be negatively impacted by cannabis use. But instead, like we’re experiencing here in Oregon, it’s opened a door to re-litigate the vote in a sense. Measure 91 is not being implemented as written and subsequently passed by the voters last November. The federal government needs to come to the realization that legalization federally needs to happen now. Not later, but now. Resolve the banking issues that affect cannabis businesses. Stop incarcerating people for possessing a plant. And for the love of all that is holy, don’t put us in the position of having to choose to heal or work. This conflict between states and the federal government is destructive to everyone concerned. Fix it because we’re all tired of your indifference toward us. We’re not drug addicts for using cannabis. Some of us are patients. Some of us prefer it to alcohol. Some of us just like it. Show some integrity and protect us for once.