Pubdate: Thu, 18 Feb 2016
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Column: Weed Between the Lines
Copyright: 2016 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Sarah Haas

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

With just over 12 weeks of writing this column, I am still pretty 
green when it comes to cannabis. I am no expert, rather the opposite, 
an inquiring mind with a lot of questions to pursue and subjects to 
learn about.

In many ways, I find that my journey of getting acquainted mirrors 
the current state of cannabis, itself in a stage of exploration. I 
dedicate a lot of my attention, time and brainpower to cannabis and 
find few answers. Rather, I encounter a lot of opinions based on a 
slew of new information largely interpreted with attitudes and 
theories formed during prohibition.

Lately, there has been talk that the media is not accurately 
reporting on marijuana. The arguments claim everything from the 
pressure of pro-marijuana advertising dollars, to an industry that 
holds power over writers, to stereotypes of journalist stoners 
happily writing about their long awaited hey-day.

In a recent International Business Times article by Joel Warner, 
"Marijuana Has Become A Media Darling, But Are Journalists Too Soft 
On Pot?" he asks, "after years of critical reporting on marijuana 
issues (with marijuana as an illegal and stigmatized drug), if they 
(journalists) bother to cover the subject at all, have the media as a 
whole moved too far in the opposite direction? Are reporters and 
editors now so high on the topic of cannabis that they're going too 
soft on the subject?"

Journalists and writers serve a lot of functions, among the most 
important of which is to describe society to itself. Here we are, in 
this specific moment in time, barely post-prohibition, collectively 
painting a picture of what is. New information is constantly emerging 
as is speculation about what it all means. So, are journalists too 
soft on pot or are we just in a soft moment in time?

In the archives of The Denver Post is a speech given by Mrs. Stuart 
P. Dodge just before the repeal of alcohol prohibition went into 
effect in Denver in 1933. The talk distinguishes between four phases 
of post-prohibition:

"First we must face the liquor question honestly and courageously. 
Second we must work for honest and decent legislation, realizing that 
whatever we do at the outset must be in the nature of legal 
experimentation. Third we must enact legislation which will be both 
an inspiration and a challenge to the youth of the country, who in 
the next 10 years either will be the lawmakers or the lawbreakers of 
the country. Fourth we must work for a new form of temperance."

It has only been two years since marijuana was legalized for adult 
use in Colorado, the first state to do so in the U.S. In this 
post-prohibition moment we are untangling all of the prejudices that 
accumulated since national anti-cannabis legislation passed in 1937. 
For the first time in 79 years we are doing our best to confront 
cannabis "honestly and courageously."

Whether or not people agree with Amendment 64, it passed. And now 
state officials must work with the industry to create legislation 
that accommodates legal cannabis, while keeping society orderly and 
safe. Colorado is in the thick of an age of market experimentation - 
a vastly different set of issues than those ripe for reporting during 
prohibition or in the established market that is to follow.

In digging between the lines, I am learning how much we think we 
know, when the real truth of this moment in time is that we know very 
little. As new data comes in everyday, it adds evidence to our 
theories, not quite confirming them, although getting us closer.

What is important now is the quality of the experimentation. The key 
to that quality? The ability to fairly and patiently scrutinize all 
of this information so that our "new form or temperance" is not based 
on old habits but on new and accurate information.

In writing this column, I quickly learned not to underestimate the 
power and influence of decades of anti-marijuana propaganda in 
establishing social prejudices. In many ways our society has been 
brainwashed for generations into thinking that cannabis is bad - bad 
for business, bad for our health and bad for the economy.

There is a tale in cannabis circles about the powerful and mighty 
businessmen of the 1930s who stood behind the criminalization of 
marijuana, Treasury Secretary and oil baron Andrew Mellon and paper 
king William Randolph Hearst, whose nephew headed the Drug 
Enforcement Agency. The businessmen's interests in the oil and paper 
industry led them to collude against all things cannabis, but mostly 
all things hemp. In a notorious if not brilliant marketing move, they 
coined the word marihuana and created a social fear of Reefer 
Madness, leading congress to make cannabis illegal and sending the 
country into an era of prohibition.

It turns out that the long-assumed dangers of pot are largely 
constructed. It's not that we've gone soft - it's that we are finally 
in an era of genuine conversation. Now that Colorado is taking the 
opportunity to learn for itself about cannabis, the spectrum of 
opinions once recognized as valid appears rather constructed.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom