Imagine for a moment, picture it in your mind if you can, that prohibition is a tree.
It’s a big tree with a huge solid trunk and great long branches reaching far and wide. The roots are just as big, spreading through the substrate of society and locking the enormous bulk of the prohibition tree firmly in place on the landscape.
Now this tree, like any other, started out as a seed. A group of men got together and pondered the future of their empires. There was a clear and present danger in the looming cannabis boom that science was predicting and cannabis, along with opium and coca already served the people so well that chemical pills and potions just weren’t in great demand. Something needed to be done.
This group of men were very clever. They did their research well and became skilled in the art of prohibition tree growing. The prohibition tree, just like any other tree that becomes overwhelmingly huge, needed fertile ground to grow in. As it turns out, the best way to enrich the minds of society and turn their group consciousness into a fertile field, ready to grow an enormous prohibition tree, was to add a healthy dose of prejudice. It didn’t matter what sort of prejudice, any would do, so they tapped into existing supplies as well as creating plenty of new sources. Racism ran rife at the time, so what better way to ensure a good supply of prejudice could there be than tapping into that baby?
“Reefer Madness” was released. “Devil’s Lettuce” horror stories appeared in newspapers across America and the world. “Marijuana” would make the “darkies think they are as good as white men” and goodness knows we can’t have that so the public poured out their prejudice and the prohibition tree got off to a great start.
When people found they could no longer buy the herbs and tinctures they relied on for pain management and good health, they were forced into the new pharmaceutical system where well trained doctors prescribed chemical potions and probably the strongest of all the prohibition trees tap roots was well established quite quickly.
As the first arrests were made the little tap root of the private prison system began to make it’s way down into the bedrock of society. Locking people up is profitable, who knows how big that tap root could end up?
Now despite the great start that the prohibition tree had been given, it seemed to slow down as society grew somewhat less racist. It turned out that Mexicans and Blacks were people too. “Hmm, can’t keep heaping that manure around” thought society and so the prohibition tree began being deprived of it’s main source of nutrition.
The prohibitionists, responsible for the planting of the prohibition tree seed and it’s careful nurture thus far were desperate for a new source of prejudice. They could see the tree wasn’t big enough yet, it wasn’t secure and solid and indestructible. It couldn’t yet stand a gale force wind of common sense and needed to be reinforced further. Prejudice comes from fear and ignorance. A lack of understanding, a bit of uncertainty, maybe a touch of anxiety and a good ‘horror’ story or two is all you need to create an irrational illusion that people just can’t see past. It’s human nature, just the way we are wired. Have a look at the pain or exhilaration on the face of the average football fan at the end of the game. It’s just a game yet so vitally important, go figure?
“The War On Drugs” was a masterstroke by the prohibitionists. It tapped into the fear, uncertainty and anxiety that society held about mental illness. There was nothing more scary than losing ones own mind! Shock Horror, fear and panic! Bad drugs, shoo, go away! Stomp stomp stomp. “How can those people use drugs? They must be immoral…Of course, now I can see. They need to be punished.”
And so it came to be that the prohibition tree flourished through the ’70′s and ’80′s, having already become big enough to withstand a little bit of common sense in the 60′s and well supplied with a fresh heap of prejudice from the minds of a blind society who learned their morals from “The Brady Bunch” as much as anywhere.
Ignorance dominated, people marveled at all the wonderful drugs those sharing caring pharmaceutical companies were coming up with because they cared about the betterment of mankind (“trust me, I’m a doctor”) and nobody seemed to notice that more and more people were falling foul of law enforcement and ending up in prison. “They deserve it, it was their own immorality that brought them undone…”
The prohibition tree grew an abundance of leaves as all sorts of groups in society discovered new and vital reasons cannabis must be suppressed. Brain damage, schizophrenia, laziness and lung cancer were among the thousands of leaves that were now beginning to cast a shadow across society.
The activists got busy. Studies and reports, art and comedy, ‘let’s pull those leaves off that tree’ they thought and off they set about pulling leaves and tossing them aside. Damn they got busy, like possums in a peach tree they made a mess. Ate the heart out of the fruit before it was ripe and stripped away the fresh shoots.
Each spring time the tree grew a bit bushier. 3 or 4 smaller shoots with new leaves appeared where each shoot had been chewed off last year. You see, big trees are tough. They know how to grow new leaves. With a steady supply of prejudice, the prohibition tree continued to grow stronger every year. As the prisons filled and the pharmaceutical companies became wealthier and wealthier, the tap roots held the tree even more solidly in place and the trunk and branches grew stronger and less vulnerable.
In the 90′s there was an exciting development. The activists acquired a new weapon in their armory. It was like magic, a cloak that shielded people from societies judgement. Medical. That one simple word felt like proof that cannabis users were real people, not just degenerate immoral lowlifes. Well, at least some of them.
“I’m not immoral, I’m a victim. Please let me have my medicine” was the cry. As far as attacking the prohibition tree it proved to be amazing. It could take off lots of leaves at once. The activists were no longer armed with secateurs, now they had a hedge trimmer!
They found that by clever use of the ‘medical’ word hedge trimmer, they could actually have an impact on the shape of the tree. They stopped the branches waving in the power lines and managed to reduce the foliage and let a little bit of light through to shine on society.
“How could you say no to a sick person getting relief from their condition?” is the question they think can’t be beaten. And it can’t, it’s true. That question can cut sticks off the tree, not just twigs. The problem though is that the tree can cope with that. It just grows thicker where it hasn’t been trimmed away.
The seemingly unnoticed psychology that comes with the medical cannabis question is that it unwittingly confirms societies prejudice against anyone who uses cannabis without a note from the doctor.
That prejudice continues to feed the prohibition tree and fill prisons with people who use cannabis. It continues to suppress industrial cannabis and prevent it from challenging the global resources status quo. It continues to suppress medical research into cannabis and prevents it from chewing into the profits of the pharmaceutical companies and worst of all, it is distracting people long enough that the pharmaceutical companies have now begun to take over the rights to cannabis as a medicine.
The people can have Sativex, the prohibition tree is as healthy as ever. Big Pharma has stolen the profits and the jails are still overcrowded.
Look at the actual statistics of medical marijuana laws in Canada. It’s a joke. A stupid, ridiculous, corrupt, laugh in the face of the people joke. 3-4 million cannabis users. Well over 1 million who should qualify under Health Canada’s guidelines and yet after 12 whole years of having medical cannabis laws in place there are only 30,000 odd people in the whole of Canada who have legal access to cannabis. The figures are rough but you get the picture.
So what do we do in 2013? Do we continue being busy doing what we have been doing for the last 25 years? Trimming the leaves and having a say in the shape of the prohibition tree?
I say we should starve the bastard.
Let’s wipe out the prejudice and stop feeding it. That’s an important bit so I’ll say it again. Wipe out the prejudice.
When we stop feeding it, the prohibition tree will slow down in it’s growth. It will become less able to regrow new leaves and it will begin to weaken.
When the prejudice of prohibition and the harm that it does to people is recognised, a rot will begin to set in. Pro prohibitionists will stop watering the tree in case they are blamed for the harm it has caused.
The tree will starve and die and the lawyers can come in and take it down. It can be fed through the chipper and made into mulch or perhaps if we’re clever we can design some cool furniture but either way the people will no longer be hurt by the dark shadow of prohibition. Fungus and carrion can devour and reinvent the tap roots as always happens in a corporate world.
And the people can live in the sunlight.
Matt Riley.