Pubdate: Thu, 13 Jun 2013
Source: Tucson Weekly (AZ)
Column: Medical MJ
Copyright: 2013 Tucson Weekly
Contact:  http://www.tucsonweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/462
Author: J. M. Smith

SMITH SMACKS HIS HEAD

Here's Why You Won't Catch Our MMJ Columnist Wearing a Pot Leaf 
T-Shirt or Celebrating 4/20

Over the past year and a half, I've skimmed the surface of medical 
cannabis like a bat snatching bugs off the surface of a Sonoran 
creek. I've swooped down week after week, picking tidbits from the 
surface but never dipping much below it.

There are a lot of reasons for that, one of which is that I'm not 
sure I have the stomach to immerse myself in medical cannabis. As a 
journalist, I have always had a pretty good bullshit meter. It has a 
served me well throughout a lengthy, successful career in the news 
industry. My bullshit meter has been working overtime since taking this gig.

Sometimes I look around at the cannabis community, and all I can do 
is sigh and shake my head. There are a lot of marijuana-obsessed 
people out there who have hijacked the medical paradigm, stripping 
away any real chance of significant credibility among the 
establishment. I'm guilty of some of it myself.

This column has at times become a shrill, screaming fit of hyperbolic 
grammar and syntax that has surely sometimes widened the division 
between Us and Them. I've probably pissed off a few Teabilly fuck 
sticks, but most of them were already pissed, so I feel only 
marginally bad. I've pissed off some friends of cannabis, too.

What I haven't done is jump blindly on the cannabis train, waving my 
green flag at rallies and various and sundry gatherings of cannabis 
advocates and seeming profiteers. Interestingly, a lot of these 
people advocated legalization before Cali struck medical gold in 
1996. They simply went legit, veiling their weed obsession with medical garb.

Some of you may have noticed that I didn't acknowledge 4/20. If that 
bothered you, then Mr. Smith suggests you take a look at your 
motivation. I didn't recognize 4/20, because it has nothing 
whatsoever to do with medical cannabis.

Nothing. Period.

I think I'll start a new holiday-10/20. That's what time people take 
ibuprofin for headaches that would otherwise keep them awake. Let's 
contrive a holiday and have a huge rally. The official color will be 
ibuprofin red. We can march in the hundreds, openly taking ibuprofin 
right in front of everyone, singing the virtues of our favorite 
wonder drug. We can carefully craft giant flags with pills on them 
and wave them around for the television cameras. Sound ridiculous?

It is.

The 4/20 obsession is a childish excuse-invented by high school 
students, according to urban legend-to smoke dope. People try to cast 
it as something more, as if it were a reasoned, measured response to 
oppression by The Man. Sorry, but cheering and waving a blunt around 
in the street isn't helping the medical cannabis world. It's making 
you look like a high school sophomore.

I hear a lot of hyperbole from fellow cannabis advocates. They get 
all up in arms about the lies and selective truths coming from the 
establishment ... then they spout lies and selective truths. My 
favorite is the "cannabis never killed anyone" song.

Bullshit.

If you believe cannabis never killed anyone, you are every inch as 
naive as the anti-cannabis pig fuckers who want you to be their pig. 
Cannabis has undoubtedly killed many, many, many people. If you think 
millions of people can inhale carcinogens daily through their entire 
adult lives, all of them somehow miraculously avoiding cancer and 
none of them dying because of it, I feel sorry for you. I hope you 
are not in a responsible job that requires well-reasoned, life or 
death decisions.

Yes, I use cannabis daily, but I don't have any pot leaf shirts. I 
don't have pot bumper stickers on my car. I don't keep cannabis in a 
tray on my coffee table next to a giant Fathead glass piece, like 
some kind of altar to be approached with reverence and ritual as need 
arises. It isn't integral to my psyche.

After all, it's only medicine.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom