A Word About Weed

It has been interesting living in a state that has made medical marijuana legal. People are officially recognizing its use as a healing herb, which vindicates the views of many people since before the law changed.

Of course, there are many who still have the opinion, that people who use marijuana are addicts, even though marijuana is not an addictive substance. Some of these people share the opinion that it should never have been legalized.

And now the politicians have changed the laws that govern this new home grown industry. Yes, home grown in the sense that it is creating new jobs here.

Of course, there are many people who enjoy smoking marijuana just for fun and those people look forward to the day when full legalization will come, and people will just be able to go and buy it like a pack of cigarettes, and the government will make money on the taxes.

It certainly has less side effects than drinking. If we simply penalize users for their errant behavior, then it will be the same as drinking in terms of the way we set limits on it.

One irony of all this is that although the so called War on Drugs has attempted to wipe out marijuana consumption, that battle has long been lost, medical marijuana or not. The other thing is that the growers became expert botanists and gardeners with a very scientific approach because when aerial recon and spraying forced growers indoors, they found ways to grow more productive plants in less space, without natural light.

So the failed war on drugs not only created better and better generations of growers and plants to supply an ever increasing demand. It is like what happened when politicians got the bright idea to outlaw beer and alcohol. People didn't quit drinking and organizations sprang up to slake their thirst.

Funny how we have to keep on learning the same lessons over and over.

Right now all the wrangling over new laws is about who is controlling the money. The debate is no longer whether marijuana is good medicine. And the debate is no longer whether there is growing popular support for it both as medicine and for recreation. it is just a matter of time until more minds change.

It is interesting to watch such a momentous change in action. It must have been that way when our grandparents watched alcohol was declared illegal, remained popular and then return to legal status.

From caveman days to less than a hundred years ago, people freely used it as medicine, ceremonial herbs, and for fun. They never would have thought that we would be going through contortions like this over it.

We look at lessons like this from within the memory of our grandparents time. The same types of lessons can be learned from past lives. But that is another story.