There is nothing wrong with pot. Cannabis itself lacks the association of something so base as even alcohol. It has not been tied to the antisocial behaviors alcohol or tobacco smoking has. Whether this will change is irrelevant now however unlikely. Facts do not align with the required dynamics of an addictive or dangerous system such as they do with the aforementioned.
Behavior changes with Cannabis are too often positive, and recorded as such, to believe its use could become anything more than it is. Alcohol is often connected as cause or result of trauma. Tobacco has killed millions, and continues to– but so do automobiles.
To say nothing of the unfairness of restricting access to what a person might want or need, to experience.
Though the same cannot be said of those things and experiences that might harm others through them, it is no less unfair to restrict them from doing such things in public, within reason. In simplest terms: smoking tobacco in public should be no more restricted than not smoking in public.
In theory, this is only fair. In practice, it’s understandably uneven: I.e, smoking sections in restaurants do not reasonably separate smokers from non as a result of building ventilation, but can if designed to, as in the case of smoking rooms in airports.
Beyond these obviously reasonable effects, unlike Tobacco, Cannabis has little to no market value for “criminal” enterprises if not prohibited. Simply, there is no money in illegally trading a legal product. By that stage in its marketability it is too abundant. Too easy to manufacture, grow, or get hold of. A plant, literally nicknamed for its ability to grow abundantly anywhere, despite medium or climate, is an obvious loss to any unrestricted market.
Again, in simplest terms: certain items, made legal, are unprofitable to trade as illegal ones because they require prohibition to have value.
The only entities that care about such attributes are industry. Industry: the same systemic machine-arm of society that formed the paper-trade that outlawed Hemp. Cannabis, outlawed in the 30s as a result of Immigrant-fueled white-hysteria, became the poster child for anti-criminal law enforcement.
Because such entities excel at that type of contradictory hubris.
A century ago, the fad was packaged and rolled Tobacco cigarettes. This time, it’s Wacky Tobacky cigarettes. No true change has occurred in the system, just in the throughput, and thus its output. Pot’s going into the rolling machines now, not tobacco, that’s it.
The difference lies in people’s use of it. Cannabis, or Pot, is tribal. Ritual. It has an effect Human beings thrive on. That idea, spreading as it is, is powerful. Its zen qualities are reflected in the people whom use it and hope to pass on its values. To the Rastafarians, this is the “Sacred Herb.” One that brings the spirit closer with that of Jah, or God incarnate.
People, learning to think and feel for themselves. No matter the confines of their circumstance, it is they whom dictate its revolving, when and how to grease its wheels to aid in time’s passage. Of course there are elements of systems that oppose that, but only because they fear losing the power their control over it gives them.
Fact is, power exists regardless. They’ll survive: are just scared. Their fear, because of its nature, causes them to exert squeezes on their surroundings. Just as the fearful wise-man grips his armchair these creatures grip their power-bases through small, almost meaningless acts that ripple panic down to the masses. It is in drops at a time, but builds to overflow or spillage.
Like fear, anger is understandable. As are all emotions. Anger however, should never turn to wrath against those seeking goodness in earnest. Like all, they too know fear and can be unpleasantly controlled by it. The danger comes when thousands suffer and die needlessly, from ignorance of these facts as in the case of so-called “Drug Wars.”
So. No person is inherently bad for their use of a thing. Let alone something with as many proven uses as Cannabis. An ill-intended person will be ill-intended despite their day-to-day habits. This is Human Nature.
This knowledge alone is a kind of soul-vaccine, like that usually reserved for the pious or saintly. Yet that vaccine, discovered and deduced easily not only through the effects of Cannabis, but in its name, is of the dual instruments of practice and meditation; observation and recollection. Of one’s self. Their depths.
Such is akin to the essence of Truth. Of Human knowledge. An understanding so deep that only Gods and myths can accomplish its reach and still stand before our suspended disbelief. Yet all the same, it is measured in bits and bytes because it can be: because our world can be. Each of us admits that this is our reality: our Matrix and shared illusion. Science agrees.
Our world can never be as beautiful outside as in until each of us knows, accepts, and works toward that regardless of gratification or not. We must be willing not to see the fruits of our efforts, and so therefore make our species’ inner-beauty shine all the brighter meanwhile. Force, as an aura, to radiate in auras of healing energies; thoughts, emotions, tender actions, no matter how difficult.
We must do this, because otherwise, we deserve nothing as a species. Creator or no. We are wounded. Damaged and in need of repair. No tool, no matter its capacity for danger, should be stripped from our tool box entirely. Merely kept from the hands of those untrained in its use, but in the same, restrained way as any yet-untrained contributor.
This is the task from our Mother– not that of each of us as individuals, but that of all of us: the creating forces of not only Earth, sentience, the universe, but their collective power. For truly, they are inert. Products of circumstance. Effects of natural forces eroding one another like repeated floodwaters of a ravine.
There is no further room for our indifference toward these ideas as a species. No matter how odd it must seem, we as their products must bow before the unseen forces only Science comprehend. Therein, we must accept that it is not each of our places to comprehend it, but that we can if we wish to.
We must trust only in the tangible. Have faith, but based only in what is known to be true: Ideas. Powerful ones. But ideas nonetheless. True ideas. Conclusions. Logical deductions. Theories. Concepts evolved and changed but concluded in their final iteration. The type of aspiration of a species and for a species; to each one contribute something world-changing, however “fallen-short” it might end up.
Cannabis, or pot, does not make one a bad person. Only condemning ideas for change and the betterment of all. If the former led to the latter, condemnation would be understandable. But if it does not, it is irrelevant to character.
S. M. Nolan's Sci-Fi Logbook 