Dominic Holden

One of the problems with stoners is that they spend all their time smoking pot and talking about what they’d be doing if they weren’t sitting around smoking pot… Politically like-minded progressives are no better—that is, folks who aren’t interested in getting high but think the drug war is a tragic farce. Those folks are often so resigned to the big federal drug war that they throw up their hands and focus on “real priorities.” Well, you’d have to have your head shoved so far up your pooper to think drug policy reform is a low political priority that you can’t see we’re being robbed blind of wallet and liberties. But browbeating well-wishers helps nothing, either. My apologies.

What’s an idealistic stoner or practical liberal to do?

This awesome graphic, via NORML, offers a suggestion: support the pie-in-the-sky marijuana decriminalization bill introduced in to Congress by Rep. Barney Frank last week. Whatever. A federal bill to decriminalize pot is nothing more than waving the flag to announce our presence. But that bill would never pass without localized pressure. What would actually nudge America toward better drug laws?

Several things. And they fall into two basic categorizes: The shit you can do and the shit you can’t. The shit you can’t do is litigate cases that will establish better law, draft legislation and lobby, run initiatives, conduct studies on the impact of bad drug laws and the benefits of reform, and make major media buys. The other, which you can do, is essential to the success of all that other stuff.

You need to normalize pot.

Here’s why: In repeated state initiative and opinion surveys, polls show that support for marijuana-law reform caps out at about 45 percent. That remaining 6 percent necessary to change the law—or support their lawmakers—holds back because they are afraid of pot. It’s unfamiliar and scary. So, back up. Who is that 45 percent? Most of them have smoked pot or have known a pot smoker. They’re not afraid of pot because it’s familiar. But looking at the raw numbers, about 100 million Americans have smoked marijuana, according to federal surveys, so nearly every American knows a pot smoker. They just don’t know they know any pot smokers. What’s your job? Fuck calling your representative. More importantly you have to let people know, in the most polite and upstanding way possible, that you smoke pot. And you have a job. You pay taxes. You have a family. You aren’t part of the cultist stoner-culture subset depicted in movies and High Times Magazine. There simply aren’t 100 million of those people in America. Pot smokers are everywhere and they’re ordinary people; the drug isn’t inherently scary and the users don’t deserve to go to jail. If you don’t smoke pot, but you used to—admit it. If you don’t smoke pot and never have and never will—then say you know pot smokers and you think it should be legal. Familiarity creates support at the polls–so we can decriminalize marijuana in your state. For real, dude.

So put down the bong and shoot straight with people about getting high. Or are you ashamed, faggot?

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 8:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.