Did we just open the door to legalization?

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that as long as states don’t let it be a free for all, they can move forward on recreational use of cannabis. And apparently, this applies to the states with legal medical cannabis as well. Now that we have legalized dispensaries here in Oregon, and reduced cannabis to a Schedule 2, it will be interesting to see how all of this unfolds. 

It certainly feels like we’re on the path to full legalization. I’ve never understood how it could be prohibited on a lie in the first place. Especially considering how many lives have been ruined by incarcerating folks for using a completely safe plant to feel better – either medicinally or recreationally. What difference does it make which it is?

But then we’ve been led astray before, and I suppose that we’ll have to wait and see just how far-reaching this is. Will it stop the court case involving an Anaheim landlord and the DEA in which the DEA wants to seize the building owned by the landlord because he had a tenant there with a dispensary? I read that the building is worth 1.5 million so is that what this is about? Money? What about the fact that it’s legal in California for dispensaries to exist? Will they finally leave Harborside alone? After all, Oakland wants them there. Will this result in releasing the people in jail for cannabis? It should. Will the raids on the legal dispensaries stop now? Was it the fact that Senator Leahy decided to hold hearings next week in the Judiciary Committee to ask why state laws aren’t being respected that this response happened today? I mean, I don’t really care as long as this is the real deal.

I don’t know, but things do feel different. Watching the Let Freedom Ring event yesterday in Washington DC commemorating the March on Washington as well as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave me hope for the future. It seems like people are getting really tired of the nonsense that’s been going on. It’s all about oppression in one fashion or another. Doesn’t matter if it’s cannabis laws, the Voting Rights Act, the Keystone XL Pipeline, Wall Street and the economy, Congress, the Violence Against Women’s Act, SNAP, Meals On Wheels, Head Start, or anything else. We want to be treated with respect and dignity by our government. We want law enforcement to stop behaving like thugs. We want Congress to do it’s job. We want this ridiculous sequester to stop so that necessary programs such as SNAP, Meals On Wheel, and Head Start are fully funded. It’s okay to care about the American people. You’re supposed to. You can’t create the current situation and then walk away from your responsibilities. 

And your primary responsibility is to tell us the truth. Always. The last thing any of us should fear is following our state laws. Because that’s what cannabis patients fear. We follow our state laws and then we go to jail anyway, or the dispensary owners have their businesses raided. Or our children are taken from us. I hope this new understanding stops all of this from happening in the future. It’s like that doctrine of clean hands idea. If you can’t come into court to sue someone when your own participation in the situation is less than legal, then how can the government prohibit something it’s lying about and then incarcerate its citizenry for knowing the truth and using it anyway? 

It would be one thing if cannabis killed people. I know the government likes to say it does all kinds of horrible things, but it’s simply not true. But if it were that bad, then prohibition would make sense. We have all kinds of laws on the books protecting consumers from businesses that essentially lie to them about their products.  If it’s against the law to scam people in business, why isn’t lying to the American people about cannabis? Surely we can all agree that we’ve been scammed all this time. If anyone doesn’t agree, better watch Sanjay Gupta’s special again. 

All we’re asking for is for the truth about cannabis to be common knowledge. I attended the Seattle Hempfest this year and listened to a panel of doctors talk about the efficacy of cannabis in the treatment of pretty much everything. Dr. William Courtney went on and on about the benefits of daily raw cannabis in one’s diet. He fervently believes that it should be a regular part of our diet. And given all of the environmental concerns we face, cannabis can protect and heal us. 

The federal government never should have allowed this state/federal conflict to exist in the first place. As soon as decriminalization efforts began, followed by medicinal cannabis laws, the federal government should have eliminated the conflict so that state laws would be respected. To let it go on this long is abuse. The federal government needs to own what they did to all of us. 

So there you have it…