[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
My people in Santa Cruz are the very best and have been so good to me over the years I never seriously thought about obtaining a medical marijuana card. There was no need or price difference, and no one wanted to end up in the database, some day in some way the Feds would make your life miserable for it. Prop 215—California’s medical marijuana initiative—passed a startling 15 years ago in 1996, but only now is its influence being personally felt.
The initiative passed, yes, but Dianne Feinstein and all those other doddering Fed vultures instantly swooped in with threats and warnings of moral hell and imprisonment if pot sales went legal. After the Bush years were finally over real change was possible, but local jurisdiction was still vehemently opposed in many places and sorting out place of sale and other very necessary regulations was and is a real pain in the ass for city councils. Enough patience, understanding, benign experience and those holy sales tax dollars have made local pot clubs a fairly common phenomena by now in my beloved California.
I’m a nausea patient, by the way, I have cyclical vomiting syndrome. Every 60-70 days I’m very sick for 12 hours, on the spot if I get upset enough, stress activates it. Very unfortunately marijuana does nothing for the event except make it worse, but my stomach is wrecked for a week and without pot I’d never recover and have any life without it. 120 months into it I’m only sick one day now, a day for rest and then get up, home, there’s something to keep your stomach peaceful. If the event can be stretched to every 100 days I can have a real life again, a fervently cherished goal that seems to be wobbling into reality.
Uh-huh. Like I said, my people in Santa Cruz will even deliver when I’m sick, so why end up in the database, why have the evil chattering minions of that clacking, drooling Dianne Feinstein get their filthy snooping mitts on it and then crash into my life? But as pot club acceptance slowly spread out in San Jose new cannabis products seeped out too, beverages in mysterious dark bottles with flaring graphics, edibles in all forms, and gelcaps, “cannabis extract” in long torpedo-like pills. Passed on from a nausea patient friend the gelcaps proved to be personally very good, a blessed calming of the stomach and relaxed fluidity of muscles without the stony semi-stupidity of smoking.
Hmmmm. Retail hours, no furtive pot deals in parking lots, something really new and useful. Hmmmm-ah-hmmmmm. You know what? So much has gone wrong, so much of this world gone to hell ($1.2 trillion lent out by the Fed? Wtf?) if one day in some way those Dianne Feinstein Fed goons get me on the no-fly list or something, well hell with it, I’ll deal with it then.
I had the proper documentation for the three nausea pills I take, but no one else seemed to have paperwork at the very busy doctor’s office downtown where I got my 420 card. Whatever. After a cursory glance and real sympathy the attractively plump Asian MD signed a certificate, then the front office issued me a card with a decent picture, I got a haircut for the evolution.
For all of those who have fought for the legalization of marijuana through all these long years, I deeply bow to you in the most humble gratitude of bliss and joy I can possibly muster. I parked at a nice building off a busy thoroughfare, a professional receptionist signed me in with a smile and energy drink, and after a short wait on leather furniture I paid for my medicine on my atm card, sales tax for me, rent and other business taxes by the owner a necessary bummer of life. Should the vultures of the elder generation (they smashed legalization here last year) flip out someday, well, here is your plain point of control.
All very true, yes, but oh my holy God I felt free. Free and accepted, no fear or furtive watching, you and who you are free and legal, be yourself and Zen with that sales tax, holy shit. Thank you, bless you, peace be upon you always, Jesus did you make some difference in my life.
To those who say I take medicine that I can enjoy as a recreational stoner, that’s bad and illegal, of many possible answers I say with gentle firmness: please mind your own fucking business. I deeply care about being a good American, and I assure you with every atom of my soul that if you can see the issue you can easily see so little harm.
420 is still heavily stigmatized, it’s not easy to be honest, but I only have my story and the political ramifications demand the truth. Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon has astutely noted that public admission of 420 is almost exclusive to white males like yours truly, male privilege of the patriarchy insulates us from persecution, not bravery producing the writing.