Commentary 8-4-16

Out of the cannabis closet
 
Soon after I arrived in Sonoma County in November 1975, a neighbor introduced himself and said, “Come over and we’ll fire one up.” I wasn’t sure what he meant and never did find out. He might have meant, let’s barbecue or let’s gather around a campfire. Looking back from the vantage point of 41 years later, I’m quite certain that what he meant was something like “let’s get stoned.”
By 1975, I knew what it meant to get stoned. I liked to get stoned. I found that it generated creativity. All told, I have written 14 books and thousands of articles under the influence of cannabis.
My older brother, Fred, who was a psychiatrist and who prescribed Prozac to his patients, told me, “If you hadn’t smoked pot you’d have written 28 books.” Maybe so! Now, it’s too late to go back and start all over again.
Over the 41 years that I have lived in Sonoma County I have know dozens of men and women who have cultivated marijuana. Many of the same people who cultivated it in 1975 are still cultivating it. Some have been arrested and gone to jail. Others have made enough money to buy land, build houses, send their kinds to college and go around the world.
Some of them, like the fellow we called “Bad Karma Bob,” was bad news, indeed. He had guns that he fired day and night. He beat his wife. He grew pot on a neighbor’s property and sheriff’s deputies raided the neighbor. Bad Karma Bob was also an alcoholic who was arrested several times for drunk driving. His license was taken away.
My own experience tells me that alcohol is a far more dangerous substance than marijuana, that prohibiting citizens from doing something like growing and smoking pot only encourages many of them to do what’s forbidden.
The Prohibition of pot hasn’t worked. It hasn’t stopped the pot cultural and agricultural revolution that started in northern California and that has swept across the U.S.A. I don’t think there’s anything inherently bad or evil in marijuana, though it seems to make some people paranoid and anxious. Hey, it’s not for everyone. Neither is Pinot Noir.
The town hall meeting on the subject of cannabis that took place at the Sebastopol Grange Hall on July 27 was an important step because it gave citizens the chance to air their views. [Windsor’s was Aug. 2 at the Luther Burbank Center – Ed.] I heard growers say they wanted to be able to cultivate a few plants organically and sustainably and not have to worry about permits or the police. I heard others say they can’t abide the pungent smell of mature, female marijuana flowers in their neighborhood.
I’m sorry now that I didn’t accept that offer my neighbor made in November 1975 to “fire one up.” I might have made a good friend; good friends and good neighbors are what the cannabis story is largely about. If we can’t talk honestly with our neighbors, our children and ourselves then there’s not much hope for us. I say, whenever possible come out of the cannabis closet. Yes, change the laws, but also change the conversation.
Jonah Raskin, the author of Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War, lived in West County for thirty years.