Politics: Why Marijuana Should Be A State Decision and Not A Federal One

How greed ruined mobile/online gaming, American capitalism, and how we can prevent it from ruining cannabis.

Should Cannabis Legalization be a State by State Decision or a Federal One? from CannabisNet on Vimeo.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The mechanics of addiction is getting increasingly less effective, even while doing more to get it. Bodily tolerance makes a strong case for moderation to many cannabis enthusiasts; to others it is a reason for our constant ire towards the capitalist money making scams that make it harder to keep good pot in stock as we live our paycheck to paycheck lives. As one who has beaten nicotine addiction and has reduced his caffeine consumption to one tea bag a day, I can say that whatever withdrawals are associated with lack of cannabis, it is a cakewalk compared to those two more broadly accepted, highly addictive, stimulants.

I have been dealing with a shoulder impingement and considering the possibility of physical therapy. My lower back has now sent me to bed for the weekend and that possibility has become a confirmed future. Physical therapy is a great tool for patients recovering from traumatic injury and surgery. What I have are injuries from the stress of sitting at a desk, carrying my groceries home on a bus, being overweight, tall, and flat footed. This is to say I am having to go into physical therapy because of basic wear and tear. This is a sort of physical therapy that will be ongoing, life long, and over time will become less effective. In time I will need a cane/walker/scooter and I am already learning to use my left arm for as much as possible. They say this improves quality of life but how many people are doing it so they can continue working jobs they hate just to stay poor. Where is the quality in working yourself to the nub so you can retire as a ruined shell?

The American health care system is about worker maintenance; physical therapy for increasingly common bodily stress injuries is less about quality of life than it is keeping you at a job that is slowly killing you. Patient centered health care would be about getting some form of short term disability while preparing you for a job that would be less damaging to you, along with meds and short term physical therapy to treat pain and repair the injury.

Not to be the old guy, but I remember when the games I played on the Internet and on my phone were just simple distractions, for my commute. Now every game I download from Play Store is a different version of the same formula. The play style, interface, graphics, storylines change of course; but beneath each one is a system of diminishing rewards. At first you play all the time, always upgrading, always winning, never running out of whatever you need to keep going. The game gets harder at the same rate those rewards taper off. Players can either slog through the game until time allows them to get the upgrades needed to overcome the increasing difficulty or they can spend real money on imaginary assets. Late 19th century snake oil salesmen look on from the afterlife with raging crotch tents for the world of online gaming. We have perfected selling nothing at a premium.

In the end, I see how the greedy ruin everything they touch, which is why I oppose nationwide legalization of cannabis. Corporate America has figured out how to make video games on my phone trigger the same reward euphoria that makes gambling and high risk investment (this feels redundant, but I am told they are different) as addictive as cocaine. They have promoted youth tobacco and alcohol use, putting profit over the well being of children. One of the reasons I despise blunts is because there is nothing that scares me more than the tobacco industry getting their claws into cannabis. They advance a system of health care that is more about getting people back to work than it is about getting people healthy and whole. They bankrupt whole communities just to make their already rich executives and shareholders, richer still. I don’t want a drug warrior (which Trump’s political allies suggest he will be) I don’t want a corporate shill (which Clinton’s political history screams she will be) because handing cannabis to big money is no better than handing it back to the DEA, both are big steps backwards.

Right now we are already seeing the business end of cannabis take off and it is beautiful. It’s beautiful because it is local businesses, community programs, and it’s cleaner and safer than what came before. If national legalization became the new front, instead of state by state, the winners would not be everyday weed smokers who smoke weed every day or local entrepreneurs. It would be RJ Reynolds, Bayer/Monsanto, Pfizer, Wal-Mart. Just like the dispensary system in Oregon is being buoyed up by regulating patient-grower contracts out of existence, so too would the dispensary system be crushed when forced to comply with federal regulations.

It is not that I don’t trust my fellow Americans with free legal cannabis; I don’t trust our corporate citizens with anything. We have seen how they have handled every precious thing they are allowed to touch; from toxic over processed food to private scam colleges to peoples homes, health, and careers. To our corporate citizens everything is to be exploited for profit and no consideration for who gets hurt is to be given. To imagine they would treat our precious flower as it deserves to be would be the height of insanity. Until our society does away with these bizarre protection rackets designed to legally indemnify those with wealth from the means by which they make that money, I continue to support the Obama-Sanders position of removing the federal barriers to states making their own decisions about what to do with cannabis. I know this infuriates those of my brethren still living in the deep red south (where a state by state fight could take decades, instead of years, to penetrate the thick skulls of good ole boy politics) but you just have to understand that you either move the state you are in to where you want to be or move to a state you want to be in. Come to Cascadia now; before we close our borders with Trumpanistan.

Marijuana Law Should Be State Decision And Not A Federal Government One