It was the summer of 1965, and I was recuperating from a broken arm in the home where I grew up in West Virginia. I couldn’t swim or play baseball with my friends since I had a cast on my arm, and I was bored silly. Looking for something to read, I leafed through an old medical textbook that my father, a physician, owned. It had been published around 1915.
To my amazement, the textbook contained an entire chapter on cannabis, the scientific name for the plant also known as marijuana. It detailed all sorts of emulsions and concentrates that could be used to treat various maladies. But those treatments had long been criminalized, thanks to the Marijuana Tax Act and subsequent legislation.
A decade later, I was asleep in my dorm room at college when I heard my roommate, who I’ll call Jim, throwing up after drinking too much the night before. After a few minutes, his vomiting progressed to dry heaves, an attempt to vomit without actually doing so.
The noise (and the smell) woke me up, and I got Jim a glass of water to settle his stomach. But he vomited the water back up immediately.
Our friend Dale walked into our room. He lit up a hand-rolled cigarette that had the unmistakable odor of cannabis. “Smoke this,” he told Jim.
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The Feds painted themselves into a corner with marijuana prohibition, actually paying other countries to follow suit. For the Feds to do a 180 and say that their assessments in the 1930s and the Nixon years were mistaken would be an embarrassment it doesn't want to bear. It'll come eventually, but look for the Feds to want to make a lot of money on regulating it.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, in the states, make good use of that closet.