Monday, May 14, 2018

Why I Don't Smoke Pot

I've never been particularly shy about my opinions regarding drugs (see Legalize Everything). My general philosophy is, when in doubt, legalize it. Marijuana? Legalize it. Ecstasy? Legalize it. Heroin? Fuck it. And legalize it. The prohibition of consensual human behavior isn't just immoral, it's impossible and the state knows it. The point of prohibition isn't to prevent drug use, Its to get rich failing. Between the arms industry and the Prison Industrial Complex, prohibition is a booming cottage industry, made in America. In Guadalajara, the cartels sling dope. In Washington they sling guns and shackles. One can't exist without the other. It's a marriage made in hell.

But my fixation with intoxicants transcends the stuffy corridors of law and order. I love drug culture and I always have. Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Cobain, Allen Ginsberg, Courtney Love, Timothy Leary, Lou Reed, virtually all of my favorite people are junkies which is made somewhat ironic by the fact that aside from the staggering regimen of prescription pills I require to maintain some assemblage of sanity, I'm about as Straight Edge as Ian goddamn Mackaye (Google it, you rubes). Don't smoke, Don't drink, Don't toke, Don't trip. It's not like I'm not curious. I've always wanted to experiment. I had a lot of friends in school who did, but to quote the Hives, I've always been "too messed up to even mess around".

With my myriad gumbo of mental health and nervous system maladies, I could probably benefit a great deal from some more organic narcotics, marijuana and psilocybin in particular. However, I could also just as easily trigger some kind of apocalyptic melt down without the proper consultation. But with the rise of the medical marijuana industry and psycho-friendly, high CBD strains like Northern Lights and Querkle, realizing my lifelong ambition of high functioning stonerdom has become a very graspable reality. So naturally when my home state of Pennsylvania became the latest state to legalize, I was stoked. But still I don't smoke. Why? You ask.

To put it bluntly, I'm too poor to get high and the law fucking sucks. In spite of the fact that my crippling social anxiety has kept me from maintaining employment for over a decade, Medicaid doesn't cover a drug that could help me to chill the fuck out without all the negative side affects of hardcore benzodiazepines. And the state of Pennsylvania doesn't even recognize agoraphobia as an eligible condition for its medical marijuana program. It's almost like they don't want the mentally eccentric to escape the bureaucratic straight jacket of the welfare state....   

Regardless, even if I were deemed eligible by Pennsylvania's designated wizards of pot, good dope doesn't come cheap. A gram of a CBD heavy indica like Harlequin can run upwards of $75 bucks and PA's medical marijuana law is what they call a No-Smoke Law. Supposedly designed for "public safety" (that old fascist trope), it makes every cannabinoid besides high-priced vapeable concentrates illegal in spite of the fact that there still remains zero solid evidence connecting smoking cannabis with lung disease.

This effectively makes getting stoned a classist right reserved for upwardly mobile suburbanites with disposable income, not white trash fags like me. It also forces patients to rely completely on the big business producers that carry the tools in Harrisburg in their back pockets. Rather than being able to grow our own plants, free from pesticides and carbon dioxide, the citizens of Pennsylvania are left to the mercy of an incestuous cartel of predator capitalists and government bureaucrats. And my state isn't alone. In neighboring states like New Jersey and New York, medical marijuana is next to impossible for anyone to obtain, essentially making it legal in name only. People either have to move to a state with (slightly) saner laws or resort to the black market, which brings us full circle.

I think we need to except the unfortunate fact that medical marijuana as we know it is a bust. Nothing substantial has ever been gained by turning the marketplace into a bureaucratic cobweb of who knows who, who blows who. These laws are a slick form of stoner payola from the very same people who make a mint off prohibition. Let rich white folks get high while people too poor (or too free) to buy into this rigged system get buttfucked by the people's stick. The only exceptable approach to marijuana or any other controlled substance for that matter is full legalization without exception. There is no such thing as a glass half full in a democracy because any glass left half empty will inevitably be filled with shit. And that's exactly what my state's pot laws are; pure weapons grade shit.

Smoke em if you got em, dearest motherfuckers. But this motherfucker isn't smoking a damn thing that I don't grow myself.



Peace, Love & Empathy- CH



Soundtrack; songs that influenced this post

* Little Green Bag by the George Baker Selection
* Die, All Right! by the Hives
* Hit So Hard by Hole
* I'm Set Free by the Velvet Underground
* Lithium by Nirvana
* Coming Down by the Dum Dum Girls
* Some New Kind of Kick by the Cramps
* White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane

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