Have You Ever Been A Victim of Marijuana Discrimination?

Have You Been a Victim of Marijuana Discrimination? from CannabisNet on Vimeo.

“You’re just smoking your life away.”

It was one of the last things my older brother ever said to me before he decided that particular elements of my lifestyle, namely my very open marijuana use, were just too offensive to him and he literally could not sit idly by any longer as a quiet onlooker to witness the fouls of my felonious life- so he decided he never wanted to speak to me again.

Harsh right?

I thought so too… but I’d wager what gambling addicts refer to as a sure bet that many of you reading these very words have been similar victims of anti-marijuana bigotry; it’s just that people like myself fall as easier targets before the double-loaded barrels of sanctimonious indignation aimed by the most uncompromising devout of the prohibition faithful. It’s easy to look at individuals such as myself and formatively construct the harshest critiques about the type of person I must be because I fit the mold of a lifestyle that has been branded as evil and dangerous- a lifestyle that for decades has been viewed as primarily habituated by the motivation-less dregs of society.

See, I live in a converted 1977 Toyota Hiace campervan in Outback Australia with my wife and daughter. We recently sold most of what we spent years collecting together- deciding life was too short to spend it wistfully daydreaming about what our lives could be rather than actively pursuing our dreams and making them a reality- so we quit our jobs and left. We have long hair. We dress in bright colors. We play the Djembe. These things in and of themselves are not bad, but apparently, when you add our regular and quite open cannabis use to this equation the above lifestyle choices are viewed as irresponsible, lazy and an excuse to remove oneself from all financial obligation- a pot-fearing fundamentalist belief, ingrained into society by the convictions of those seated in power; like former senior White House drug policy advisor Kevin A. Sabet, for example, who recently announced in a statement made on national television that the using of marijuana causes the propensity for individuals to simply “drop out of life.”

The slapstick hypocrisy in my brother’s jagged observation regarding my life being wastefully lost in a cloud of smoke, is that his reflection about the misdirection of my life came after he spent Thanksgiving at my mother’s house stuffing his face with the perfected recipe of my mom’s weed cookies.

Yup, you read that right- my brother decided that the most fitting time during which to deliver a scathing critique about my affection for the herb was through a mouthful of potent marijuana edibles. (In fact, my mother affably informed me that he enjoyed the cookies so much he asked to take some home!)

My mother, being a recent convert from a lifetime of hard-line D.A.R.E. religiosity, has recently developed an affection for baking to the extent that you cannot walk into her home without seeing a plate of cannabis cookies on offer. She has a very well-paying, mainstream job. She owns a beautiful home in the heart of Dixie, is a former Marine, has held top-secret security clearances and has travelled the world. She has four kids peppered across the globe and is on the tail end of her working life, deep in the anticipation of deservedly planning her retirement.

ebibles for adults

She also enjoys getting high every night with my step-father before they go to bed.

In a similar fashion, my brother is chasing a comparable version of his own American dream; juggling university and full-time work whilst trying to raise a family with his wife from behind a white picket fence deep in the bowels of white bread suburbia; which introduces us to the capricious satire in his inept judgement: smoking pot is acceptable so long as you fit the mold. Smoking pot is tolerable, seemingly even amongst the most devout of prohibition supporting evangelists- so long as you do it with blushed cheeks, carrying with you the understanding that you are committing an appalling infringement to federal law; a sin that apparently finds its atonement in the browbeating of regular users of the drug who stand on a lower societal echelon due to their unrepentant attitude concerning their consumption.

Double edged standards like my brothers blatant duplicity are the illegitimate bastard children that this war on drugs has spawned since the criminalization campaign against marijuana first dawned in the early 1900’s. Over a century of slander by the pot prohibition’s forefathers and its notable anti-pot prophets has caused such a permutable turbulence that peculiar denominations of new age teetotalism have sprung up claiming an egotistical avant-garde philosophy that recreational or even habitual marijuana use is completely acceptable as long as the sum total of your other lifestyle choices are highly-principled in the eyes of the popular majority.

Adding to the intricate inconsistency of my brothers views and to the analogous disposition displayed by the faithful disciples of the worldwide congregation of the anti-ganja gospel, as to who should use marijuana and how marijuana should be used, of course, is the fact that this attitude of pot condemnation is celebrated with copious amounts of alcohol.

cannabis selections

Seems legit, right?

WRONG. And any person with the intelligence of a halfwit should be able to access the powers of their Temporal Lobe to deduce that the vilification of cannabis is based upon the bias, prejudicial stigmata of archaic fear-mongering evangelism that preaches the unjust philosophy that pot is a dangerous substance, reserved for the lower-class of society. The culminating result of a century of slanderous soapbox sermons pontificated from the pharisaic platforms of these birdbrained stool pigeons has seen the manipulative and sly proselytization of Americas majority.

While headway is being made in this battle for the legalization and decriminalization of cannabis, this contemporary doctrine presents a fresh slap in the face towards anti-prohibition advocates worldwide. We no longer have to deal solely with anti-marijuana missionaries leafleting us with the dangers of pot who at least have enough pride of conviction to abstain from the drug which they rally against, but we also have to deal with the high and mighty pious swagger of the upper crust populace who mandates what type of marijuana user is more acceptable than another.

I fail to understand how a free thinking adult can reason that such a view is well-founded, but maybe that’s just me.

What do I know anyway? I’m just over here smoking my life away. However, all this reflection has worked up quite an appetite… cookie anyone?

Peace,
James

Are You A Victim Of Cannabis Bigotry?