Well, this isn’t the year anyone expected. With ganja now being legal, and applications for business licensing for new dispensaries, craft grow licenses, processors, and logistics professionals being accepted, I was expecting to have some cannabiz topics to write about. While I was trying to remain apolitical with my writing, to ignore the fact that cannabis has been a sharply political issue for the last 75 years would be irresponsible.
With the rapid change in our day to day lives, the thousands of people dead, millions sick, and millions without a job and a way of earning enough to get by, we find ourselves witnessing the coverage of social issues being magnified, and the effects of inherent inequities and injustices amplified. We are now being shown the insecurities millions of people in our country are living with day to day, week to week, paycheck to paycheck, with no sense relief when it comes to food, shelter, and healthcare. We are are being told the stories of police brutality and unjust treatment towards people of color, as we are shown with our own eyes more than ever the violent nature of policing in America.
As witness to this treatment for longer than most in the United States, we as cannabis people, black, brown, and white, are fully aware of the inequalities inherent within the justice system in regards to race. For decades heads have known the feeling of seeing police, and worrying if they may be arrested simply for possessing a flower.
For decades we have felt the judgement cast by those who wish to look at us as less than simply for our choice of recreation. For decades we have known the violent enforcement upon a non-violent act. For decades we have known about the no knock warrants that have ended in violent results. For decades we have known of the families torn apart, the children taken from parents, the mothers and fathers taken from their families, the legacy of which having a criminal record for a non-violent act has repressed the countless generations from finding success and opportunity in this land of the free.
And for decades, we have known that the chances of these injustices happening to people of color are drastically higher than this enforcement upon white people. For decades we have known that the ability for people of color to have the means to defend themselves from incarceration and felony records didn’t match that of white people. At this point in time, to claim otherwise can no longer be considered ignorant, but as pure stupidity.
Cannabis criminalization was born of deeply racist ideas and notions. Cannabis criminalization was born of a need for subversive racial discrimination. Cannabis criminalization was created to be used as a way to maintain control over minority populations when morality dictated racial discrimination to be unjust.
So now that cannabis is legal, we must keep our minds on these injustices, and know that this pervasive and deep seated racism still exists, it is still festering within so much of this country. This subversive racism runs rampant within so many be it overt or something dark and hidden, and we must be vigilant to fight it. Micro-aggressive behavior, blatant racist statements, a willful ignorance in not confronting the uncomfortable reality that this is fact, that we need to do more. We need to to each and every one of us stand up and say that Black Lives Matter.
While I have always considered the cannabis legalization movement to be a progressive one, which strives to ensure global equality, I have seen many who fail to understand the continued injustices our society faces, even as simple cannabis possession becomes decriminalized. While it may be easy to fall into the mindset that “if it isn’t happening to me, it isn’t happening”, we must realize that this is the attitude that much of America had towards cannabis consumers cries for justice for decades.
As people of color continue to make their voices heard, as freedom fighters by the millions take the opportunity to grab the national spotlight and point out the injustices so many families and individuals still face on a daily basis, we must choose to listen and act. We must choose to believe these cries, if our privilege grants us a spot on the sidelines. We must listen to their demands, and consider them in earnest. We must choose to care and join in solidarity to shout with them demands for freedom and justice for all.
We must choose to understand that no one is free, until we are all free.
