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hide and seek with a hummingbird, a brief reminder that the war on cannabis is wrong

Listening to:	NORML Conference 2006 speech by Keith Stroup
Reading:	thisnthat
Weather:	79, nice

As a reward for doing my dishes this evening a hummingbird hung out just outside the window, about 8 inches away from my head, and stuck her tongue out and knocked into the window glass a few times. Then flew away, and came back and did it all again.

My enlightened friend Willie prompted me (unbeknownst to him) to revisit the NORML website and see what they're up to. I was a member of NORML when I was 14 until I was about 18. Then they didn't appear to have their shit very together, so I didn't renew my membership again for several years. But I went back in the early 90's when they got a splendid and uber-qualified and credible Board of Directors and really started making some progress.

I just wanted to remind any reader who stumbles on this blog that marijuana is generally a beneficial herb, it enhances life in many ways for responsible adult users (at least those who don't get busted), and the criminalization of its use, cultivation, and distribution are a ridiculous waste of public money as well as a deep injustice against millions of otherwise law-abiding potsmokers. Unlike actually dangerous popular drugs like meth and coke, pot opens the mind to broader perspectives, makes good things like music, food, sex, and beauty even better, and is truly beneficial medicine for sick people of almost all kinds.

If you think you know what kind of people smoke pot, you couldn't be more wrong. Absolutely every walk of life, political persuasion, social and economic caste, and religion, has potsmokers as members. Your neighbors are probably smoking right now, in the privacy of their homes. It's not a "gateway drug," except perhaps because of its illegality, which sends smokers unhappily into the black market to get it.

Trying to eradicate cannabis is like trying to eradicate the dandelion. They don't call it "weed" for nothing, it grows wild in every united state and virtually every nation on the globe. And it's a flower, for shit's sake.

The children, spouses, mothers, fathers, employers, and communities of incarcerated potsmokers do not deserve the varying degrees of heartbreak and hassle they've experienced when the mere possession or cultivation of pot puts someone in prison. The taxpayers deserve better schools, better healthcare, and safety from violence from their hard-earned taxes, rather than the continuous pouring of our public coffers into the failed war on drugs.

Marijuana prohibition is unjust, wasteful, ineffective, and stupid. It's beyond time to end it.

permalink posted by cat 6:00 PM

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