With all due respect to Author, Musician, Comedian, and Social Scientist, Steve Martin, getting small is never really the point. Nor is getting stoned out of one’s gourd. But, there is so much more we need to consider. Take just one example and consider these words from a brilliant, media savvy, scientist who I can only respect and in many ways, admire, especially for what he brought to the general public. Science, rational thinking, curiosity and often a hint of a path to answers to some really big (anti-small) questions:
The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.
—Carl Sagan
Honey and I were t-boned by a drunk, released the very same morning from prison, some years ago. She kept beating her kids and hubby when she drank. Despite the collision, in a huge mega-SUV, she was perfectly fine, whereas we most certainly were not.
Well, not until some years later, when she tried to hire me as her attorney because she had fallen in a commercial office’s waxed floor, and hit her head. She eventually died from a misdiagnosed subdural hematoma a few months after I said no. I absolutely declined to even consider representing her, regardless of her injuries. And yes, she had been drunk as a skunk once again.
After our collision, eventually local PD gave her a breath test 90+ minutes after she hit us. (I got the records) Even that much later, she blew a 0.29 blood alcohol level, which shocked the judge, prosecutor, her attorney and me, given how that might be fatal in less experienced sots and drunkards. (My point and my history are deliberate: Thank you, alcohol industry)
Ever since, despite multiple surgeries, permanent titanium implants in me spine, and tons of therapy, rehab, exercise, and worst of all, a Bloody Pain Clinic that loved upping my opioid doses, always with promises they would cure my pain, I have chronic, intractable pain, spasms and shooting pain down both legs.
The sturgeon who did the last operation claimed complete success. Only later did I learn that the proposed 45 minute operation ended up taking 6 hours, because the damage was far more significant than they initially thought. Not his fault — everyone admires his handiwork . . . Except for my spine. Hey, I can still walk.
For chronic pain, for life in general, for anyone who takes them, opioids suck. For spasms and shooting pains down both legs, Flex and its family of drugs really seem like tasteless candy, with no real positive impact.
Opioids are OK for an initial trauma, surgery, or acute onset of debilitating pain. But for chronic conditions, they are evil, poisonous, disastrous and addictive. Screw those drug companies, and the doctors who aided and abetted their conspiratorial, medical-based, crime upon America. Hundreds of thousands of victims — all in the name of corporate profit. But that will be another subject.
Post surgery, after seeing neuros, orthos, chiros, massage therapists, the accu-s (both pressure and puncture types), nothing helped. The last Neuro-sturgeon who viewed my MRIs (looking at the last surgery I had) told me “removal of your hardware has a 30% chance of having little impact or a small amount of success, and a 70% chance of making things worse. Your traumatic stenosis is permanent. I love doing surgery when it helps. I refuse to do yours.” Hey, at least he was being honest.
Finally, in 2014, Illinois passed its extremely restrictive medical marijuana laws, and restrictive as they were, I got one of the earliest cards and permits to buy legally.
Since then, Illinois greatly and gratefully expanded medical use, and eventually, like many other states, decided to make recreational pot legal for all over the age of 18. I can even grow my own, with limits. My last potent grow (feminized Kush) is still supplying me with significant relief, 6 months later. Cookies and other homemade edibles are so welcome. And pleasant, while reducing pain to much lower, far more livable levels. Currently, got the legal “5” in my garden, all feminized, two CBD heavy, and all thriving in the sun.
Being in my mid 60s, I don’t care much for inhaling shit in my lungs, (I tried cigs in my yute, exactly one time, one pack, of which I finished less than one half of one cig. I handed my remaining pack to a beggar on the street, who said, Dog Bliss Ewe, or something that sounded like that) so I avoid smoking, and instead learned that incredible edibles and topicals can do far more good than bad.
Seriously, the only way I can get a fool nacht of sleep is with a dose of CBD, or better yet, a combo of CBD and THC. Topical? Put a bunch on me painful areas and joints, and the pain recedes. Have a well balanced edible, preferably 2-1 CBD to THC? Then, I can actually sit and work for hours, before the pain becomes distracting, intolerable and overwhelming.
For decades, the biggest force against legalization has been the alcohol industry, combined with the last few remnants of Ye Olde Biddies of Evanston, Illinois’ Women’s Christian Temperance Onion (sp?) to scare Americans into never, ever, ever using a naturally occurring, effective, and non-toxic pain reliever called Cannabis. Even today, many elder folk express fear if you ask their permission to take a dose, suspecting that a contact high will drive them insane.
The Yute? Not so much. It is no surprise, given the constant historical drumbeat of “gateway drug”, “Pot makes you act like sum sex-nut, crazed Ni…er jazz player,” and worse. That last one is a precise quote I heard from Officer Friendly many years back in HS, who came to warn us about the evil weed. Add to that mix, consider the completely racist nature of Nixon’s Drug on War. . . eh. . . Something like that.
Minorities suffered, and continue to suffer far more because of that War, much, much more than Caucasian citizens and blonde haired immigrants from Northern Europe. How many lives and families were destroyed by that devastating and racist set of policies? How many police farces were empowered, over-equipped, manned by racists with little training, and supported in their military-styled war on pot smokers? How many careers lost? Futures denied? Even positions in Biden’s White House? How ineffably stupid is that?
Huh? Someone might have a kilo of homegrown in their freezer? Time to call out our SWAT and that funky mini-tank to break in and protect them from themselves! After all, Shoot first, find drugs later, or if not, plant some. (And not in the garden)
OK, time for an admission. I shouldn’t be so hard on those steroid enhanced officers. It is true that if you have SWAT on your force, and if you fail to use them on a routine, regular basis, they go stale. One has to keep those highly armed, over-aggressive, on their toes, ya know?
The obvious counter is that miscreants, especially Reich-wing militia types who tried to hold a capital party last January, are heavily armed, in great part to a RW Supreme Court that has never been threatened by today’s gun-based violence. I don’t wish them harm, I do wish they’d get real.
Luckily the NRA hath shat itself in the face. . . . They are done for as a current, working PAC intent on swaying public policy. So. . . Where are the Democratic congress and senators on gun control? Time to move boys and girls and children of all ages.
The idiocy of Nixon’s second war still damages us as a nation, and hurts too many individuals. So much for the land of the reef . . . fere? . . . reefer?. . . Free. . . Whatever. Millions lost their families, futures, and sadly even their lives because of that war. And, its evil impact continues to the very present, in ways so subtle, pervasive and corrupting, we often skip taking note of the harm this war causes, and more often, ignore our desperate need to stop it.
Funny thing about our Yute. Despite 20+ states legalizing recreational pot, and many more than that permitting medical uses, (Ye Nay States looked around, and began salivated at $7.9 BILLION in tax revenue they were missing out on just in 2020!) our feds still treat this natural plant as a pariah, an evil to be eradicated, and the destroyer of our yutes’ minds and their mem . . . . What was I saying?
Oh yes.
The number and percentage of our Yute who eat, smoke, vape, or use topical pot . . . HAS NOT CHANGED, despite the many more states which legalized its use to any degree. Their usage rates continue to remain steady since statistics were kept.
As for those horrific tales of stoned drivers plowing into crowds? Uh, not. Instead, Trumpistas and white nationalists are far more likely to cause harm, injury and death when they see someone of a race they hate. Cars weaponize quite effectively for those assholes.
The reality is far different. Several more sophisticated studies suggest that despite cannabis’ increasing potency, users tend to take less, and most importantly, HAVE FEWER ROAD KILL than their sober or drunk counterparts on the road. So, Pot does NOT kill. Nor can you OD on THC.
This is an invite to share your stories about the good, the bad, the ugly stories you have about marijuana, its use, the abuse by legal authorities, job impact, success stories with pain, etc.