Back in the days when I was young, in 2007, I was actively reading about cannabis. We had hit a crazy drought in France for a few years and no good weed was available. Some was laced with piled glass (to make it look like it’s full of THC crystals), that’s how bad shit was. I was looking to grow some ganja. I was looking at the absurd laws in place. I bought a whole system with lamps and all and asked my parents if I could grow some at the family house: no one says nothing, I’m gardening and smoking clean stuff, everybody wins. My dad was fast to say no (him: “it’s illegal!” me, under breath: “you a bitch”). My mom was kind of alright with the idea. She’s the OG gardener. Moms always show up at some point.
Anyway. 2009, California. Weed problem solved.
2010s, I see two indie game developers quit game development to start weed businesses on the west coast. Both are white men. Happy for them, personally annoyed.
2018, I see billboards about cannabis. I see new, white people-owned cannabis dispensers with VALET PARKING. Soon they’ll have bottomless mimosas for when you buy over an eighth on Sundays.
You can’t understand how hard that shit hits. I’ve read so many stories of black and brown people getting their lives fucked upside down for a joint in a car on a Friday night. I’ve been ostracized so much for smoking weed and not indulge with beers. I’ve probably been judged as a drug addict, soon to go down the path of some other shit because that’s what black and brown people do: they do drugs until they OD, right? The amount of shame carried by all of us, the absurd tactics to hide, minimize what society is telling us is really, really bad but is in the reality of facts, absolutely not. Even a HBO show about black LA barely mentions marijuana but has the cast drink alcohol day in day out.
And we’re *all* aware of that bullshit. It’s so weird when you think about it.
So for years you play that stupid game of hide & seek and all of a sudden, it’s legal and Forbes has articles on those white ladies in Colorado making mad money selling buds. The same ladies that would call the cops on us when we were smoking too close to their front yards. It’s not like “oh, the irony” it’s more like “what the actual fuck is this, fuck everything”.
How come weed isn’t fully legal in the entire country when it is in a growing number of states AND Canada? At this point? How come?
How come they haven’t freed all the people in jail for possession right the fuck yesterday?
How come it isn’t legal in France, the biggest consumer of cannabis in Europe? The president is fucking 40 years old, he smoked “when he was younger” and he’s acting like he can’t legalize. Fuck that president. And fuck all of y’all out there, minimizing this massive societal problem while downing bottles of booze.
How come Portugal, which legalized everything and has great results from it (reducing ODs by more than half), is not the poster child of what the fuck the whole world needs to do?
It’s hard not to be mad at this disaster. All of that for a fucking plant. An awesome, armless plant.