Why Weed Photobombing could be a good protest tactic
What is a Marijuana Photobomb? from CannabisNet on Vimeo.
A few weeks ago one of my fellow writers here at Cannabis.net (Boston Bake Pete) wrote about the infamous “Pot Sasquatch” which made its round on the internet. If you haven’t seen the clip…you should definitely check it out.
At first, I laughed. However, after packing a bowl of some fresh hash that was given to me by a friend at my local headshop, I started thinking deeper about what happened.
Just like the January 1st “Hollyweed” prank, the news generated some serious buzz and brought the conversation of cannabis into the mainstream. This got me thinking.
“Cannabis Photobombing” could be a viable protest to the antiquated pot laws we currently find ourselves in. I’ll explain why.
Every time something like the pot sasquatch happens, people talk about it. When we’re talking about live television, there is no way for the major networks to censor this type of behavior. In the pot sasquatch clip they tried to pan away from the ‘event’, however it was too late. Millions of people spotted the pot-mask wearing Ghillie suit and within a day, there were countless of online publications talking about it.
Now can you imagine if us cannabis activists did this on every live broadcast out there? Of course, we won’t be able to hit ‘every’ live broadcast, but odds are we can get a bunch of them on national television. There would be an immediate ‘out lash’ from the prohibition group in response to this. They will say things like “These potheads are ruining television” of which we would respond, “Your prohibition ruins lives!”
Of course, we’ll be poking a metaphorical ‘hornets nest’, and for some brave stoners, they might even have fines associated with their actions. But the end result would be the same, we’d have people talking about it…which is something we need more of.
IF you search the internet, you’ll find many people are in favor of cannabis and according to national poles, more than half of the US is ready for full-scale legalization. The missing element for making this happen is the ‘conversation’ surrounding cannabis is selectively being pushed into a dark corner of social conversation.
We need to break into more mainstream debate to start educating the remainder of the US who still lacks the insight to what cannabis truly is. Now, we could march to the White House and spark up in front of the politicians, but what effect would that have.
Last time, in the 60’s when people were protesting the Vietnam war, Nixon responded with the “War on Drugs”. Other times similar protests occurred, there were hardly any legislative actions taken. Protest helps in creating a public perception of support to a particular cause, and hardly anything else. It also takes a lot of planning to get a mass protest going.
The, let’s call it “Sasquatch Protest” is a lot easier to pull off and forcibly takes the conversation to a public space. There are no laws against photobombing live broadcasts and you aren’t disrupting everyday activities for commerce and so forth. You’re only inserting a different narrative into the social conversation while drawing attention to a subject within society that REQUIRES serious debate.
Now personally, I wouldn’t Sasquatch my photobombs, mainly because I don’t own a Ghillie Suit, but I would rather use it to educate the masses.
A Poster reading, “Legal Cannabis Reduces Suicide Rates” would be sufficient to make a statement and anchor in facts into the subconscious of the general public. Enough of these occurrences would definitely have an impact on the narrative surrounding cannabis.
The cannabis industry has grown significantly over the past few years and despite the fact that AG Jeff Sessions has an anti-cannabis stance, the industry is not subsiding. However, there are only a handful of organizations that are proactively pushing the narrative in favor of cannabis despite there being more than 50 million regular cannabis users in the US.
What would happen if we could get 1% of those 50 million to start photobombing live broadcasts? We’d see an influx of exposure on national TV that could influence the rest of the 270 million people in the US.
Once society realizes you can’t simply ignore cannabis any longer, we will start seeing changes happen on a governmental level.
The time to sit passively is over. It’s time that each and every one of us that enjoy cannabis for medical or recreational purposes stand up and unanimously shout, “We will not go silently into the night”. It’s time that we make the “Powers” realize that they can no longer keep a good plant down. We must show our strength not only in numbers, but in our tenacity to never quit, never surrender and to keep on fighting the good fight.
Cannabis prohibition affects us all negatively, both for those who partake and those who do not. Thus, it is time we take the conversation to a place that cannot be ignored anymore. It’s time more of us follow the example of the Pot Sasquatch and push the narrative to a whole new level.
So my only question here is, Are you ready to photobomb the shit out of national TV? If you do, send us your clips and we’ll spread it like a wildfire!
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