Can you feel it? It is happening. The drug war is collapsing before our eyes.
I seem to wake up with a renewed sense of purpose these days. it seems as if the “Quit Taking People To Jail For Weed” phenomena has gone mainstream. The media is abuzz with calls for an end to the madness. Not a day goes by where the chorus of opposition to these disastrous policies does not grow louder and more prominent. Check out this statement from former President Bill Clinton:
We could have fighting and killing over cigarettes if we made it a felony to sell a cigarette or smoke one, so we legalize them. If all you do is try to find a police or a military solution to the problem, a lot of people die and it doesn’t solve the problem.
-Bill Clinton- Breaking the Taboo
Or this from former president jimmy Carter:
“Putting everybody in prison because they have marijuana is a very major step backward, and it ought to be reversed not only in America but around the world,” he said.
The wind is at our back and we are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the nation. It almost makes me tear up a little when I think about it. it is an amazing time in history to be a weed activist, and I plan on cherishing the process. It is a done deal. weed will be legal. All we are working out now is how, when, and where….
That may sound a little presumptuous…..like the words of a bleeding-heart liberal weedhead who is too emotionally invested in the cannabis movement to know better; but actually those are the words of right-wing conservative radio talk-show host and Republican icon, Rush Limbaugh. In his show on November 28th, Limbaugh said, “”It’s coming. Marijuana will be legal.”
The fact is that there is no good reason for keeping it illegal. Now that Colorado and Washington have broken the seal it is all downhill from here. The reason the White House and USDOJ have not formulated a response is because they do not have one that adequately supports their position. There is no legitimate and serious reasoning for continuing to lock people up for weed. Their fear-mongering bullshit of the 1990’s has been exposed, and people have grown tired of the hyperbolic lies that have been put forth to purport this war on our own citizens… usually the poor ones.
When faced with the reality that we imprison 5x the rate of people as the rest of the world, and have a far higher rate of imprisonment than any other nation on earth, people have woken up and are beginning to ask, “What the fuck?”
But there is no easy answer for a government that has spent the last several decades ruining people’s lives over a safe, enjoyable, and helpful plant. In the beginning of a new documentary called “Breaking the Taboo” narrator Morgan Freeman makes the powerful statement that “wars are easier to start than they are to finish.”
End it will, and hopefully soon. The time is now for us to make the most of this momentum and push this issue to the forefront of history. We will end this thing once and for all and stop the evils of cannabis prohibition.
It will not end itself though….it will take a magnificent push by each and every person who supports this cause. Now is the time to be more active than you have ever been. make the phone calls. Send the emails. Comment on that blog post. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Make the most of the dialogue happening and beat the drum for ending this thing loudly and clearly.
We have got this. We are almost there. Victory will be ours, and soon if we just do the work and demand that we QUIT TAKING PEOPLE TO JAIL FOR WEED.