By: Cody Merritt Lyman
facebook.com/people/Cody-Merritt-Lyman/100015458168345
It’s a bittersweet road to prohibition and back again. Legalization can bring the people to tears in many ways.
The first type of citizen sheds tears and jumps for joy, singing praises of a beloved and harmless substance becoming available to the masses.
Citizen two weeps in frustration at even having to discuss legalizing a plant that, by his own standards, should never have been made illegal in the first place. Type Two Citizenry deplores Citizen One’s forgetting––or at best remembering hazily and fleetingly somewhere along the line––that the federal ban on cannabis led to a near genocide of the plant. Like so many other species––and particularly ethnicities of the human race––the plant had to be smuggled underground, kept safe from paraquat, and raids.
The plant’s innocence and potential benefits aside, Citizen Twos cringe, watching through tears of resentment, the old stowaway, their sacred herb, moving up the rungs of legislation. Petition, ordinance, initiative, law. By virtue of the money to be made in it, these citizens see the plant moving right back into the hands of those who once attempted––and succeeded in many ways––to outcast it so maliciously.
The plant being used for commercial and economic purposes by the same government that has spent so much money defaming it smells of supreme irony––hypocrisy. Hence many a Citizen Two insists on decriminalization, rather than legalization. By this same line of reasoning, the average Citizen Two hates anything that has to do with policies, old or new.
Now––for the third type of citizen: These don’t shed but a single tear, as they smile with patience and a touch of patriotic pride at the mainstream’s finally catching up with progress. That was an old government that prohibited free choice and allowed genocidal atrocities to transpire. We live in a democracy, and lest we forget, the government is allowed to change––indeed, was made to change. We have new representatives now, speaking for the unjustly persecuted among us, including the victimized vegetation. Naturally, our laws will adapt accordingly. Or so Citizen Three sees the world, adding, with a wistful glance from hindsight to foresight, something about how humanity is getting smarter and more compassionate all the time.
Citizens One, Two, and Three may not always see eye to eye. But they stand side by side in opposition to the other half, whom they see as the fourth type of citizen, involved in the legalization argument.
Citizen Four is brought to tears of grief, and perhaps tears steamed by anger, at the government for “giving people the OK to use that crap. It was illegal for a reason, you know.”
Citizen Three is especially accustomed to Citizen Four. It’s democracy, remember? Democracy is meant to make progress slowly, paced by the checks and balances of compromise. More often than not, it takes one step back after taking two steps forward.
So mature is that third type of citizen. Which is all well and good. But lately this little democracy of ours seems to be taking two steps back, then two more, and a sidestep.
And so, sticking with that approach, the Trump regime has recently pledged to crack down on the so far thriving, recreational cannabis industry.
The motivations for prohibition have traditionally been easily pinpointed. As in the paper industry’s campaigning to outlaw hemp in favor of timber, the motivations are often purely financial––often masquerading as motivations purely to do with public safety concern. This is Citizen Four’s argument, that any dangerous and illicit substance which might make people do who knows what should obviously be banned.
Let’s not talk about whether public safety concern is a traditionally red or blue issue. Suffice it to say; politics has once again proven that, if it’s possible to get more oxymoronic, it will find a way.
However, the Trump regime’s recent threat to crack down on a booming marketplace leaves just about every citizen scratching his or her head. (Donald Trump stymying money-making? Is he not a businessman?)
In statements, the White House has alluded to the opioid epidemic as the primary cause for discouraging the cannabis market––apparently believing it’s a gateway market to harder and blacker markets.
There’s no telling what a Trump regime crackdown might include, though it’s been suggested that certain large operations who are in compliance with state and local laws might be targeted and raided in order to “chill” the market. This would likely work to an extent, the ultimate affect being to force buyers back to the black market. (And there goes Aunty Betty back out into the streets in search of her glaucoma meds.)
The administration was careful to draw a distinction between medical cannabis and recreational cannabis, saying that it understands the need of the former and that, like medicine, it will be left out of the impending crackdown. It’s not unheard of for the White House to say one thing while the DEA does another, of course.
Even if that word is kept, however, there’s little way to crack down on the recreational side of the market without affecting the medical side. Medical cannabis supply is tied into, and in many cases codependent on, the revenue created by recreational product. This means the extent that patients in each state are affected by this upcoming crackdown will depend heavily on how strong the independent co-ops and collectives are that are in place.
For its potential oversights and lack thereof, the cannabis industry has clearly demonstrated its potential. Why, oh why, this crackdown? Could it really be, the businessman who wants to rebuild the nation is turning down big tax revenue for the sake of his values? Maybe, but not likely. So what, then, stands to be gained?
Well––if I’m allowed a paragraph of moderate speculation…
When the time is ripe, Trump is going to sit down and sign off on another executive order: the order to federally legalize marijuana. By then, the crackdown will have weakened and undermined state economies and regulatory agencies. With federal legalization will come federal regulation––namely the FDA. Once the FDA is involved, testing and certification will be affordable only for big businesses. The cannabis industry will be pushed further into the private sector. Before we know it, the Marlboro Man is coming around the mountain, lighting up a spliff of the wacky tobaccy when he comes.
And we all know he’ll be smoking the real, sticky icky.
