Cannabis News
The Clash of Cannabis Advocates
Few appreciate that both enacting and ultimately dismantling alcohol Prohibition pivoted on organized motherly outrage. 1920’s dry crusaders like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union pushed banning brews as protecting families. But the Great Depression’s violence and despair stirred maternal calls to regain reason.
Pauline Sabin, a Republican aristocrat and founder of the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, led rallies of 10,000 fed-up women demanding change. “In pre-prohibition days, mothers had little fear in allowing their children to go to ice cream parlors or soda fountains, places where soft drinks were served,” she wrote Congress.
But now children easily accessed hard liquors like bathtub gin in Speakeasies amidst booming gangsterism and corruption. Lawlessness became the greater threat to American households.
Sabin’s movement eroded dry political dominance by appealing to parents pragmatic about human desire. Their pressure ushered FDR ending federal Prohibition in 1933. But state bans persisted until 1966 when another women’s group lobbied Michigan’s legislature incisively.
“We learned our lesson that coercively banning human vices only worsens outcomes and surrendering reasonable oversight makes things potentially more dangerous, not less,” they effectively argued. Lawmakers concurred.
The rest is history – Michigan initiated regulating alcohol sensibly, other states followed embracing regulation over fantasy prohibition. And the model endures today thanks to mom-driven common sense balancing moral realism with compassion.
Now in Illinois, echoes of this timeless tension reverberate over cannabis. Ironically, the protagonists still seem familiar – outraged mothers seeking freedom versus heavy-handed authorities pushing eliminationism ideology over pragmatism.
When will we ever learn? Let’s explore this latest skirmish to uncover enduring truths…
In Illinois, a coalition of female legislators and activists who spearheaded legalizing recreational cannabis now face public attacks by a district attorney irrationally blaming the plant for fueling violent crimes and mental health crises.
These influential “Marijuana Moms” helped pass the state’s pioneering 2019 adult-use bill after years building public and political momentum. The law mandated strict safety regulations while allowing access for consenting adult use and expanding medical access.
By multiple measures, the policy’s outcomes proved positive – hundreds of millions in new tax revenue improved marginalized communities and funded social programs while youth use declined despite the fearmongering predictions of prohibitionists.
Overall the rollout demonstrated Colorado-style legalization working as intended when blending individual liberty for adults with pragmatic oversight ensuring public wellbeing. Leaders termed it “Equity Focused and Responsibly Regulated”.
But one holdout continues invoking hysterical ‘Reefer Madness’ talking points demonizing cannabis. McHenry County’s State Attorney Patrick Kenneally bizarrely blames legalization for recent homicides, substance abuse, and suicide with no substantive evidence.
Kenneally forced county dispensaries to post factually dubious warnings about cannabis psychosis leading to depression and violence absent scientific consensus. He admonished medical efficacy as “elaborate quackery” directly contradicting current federal analysis. And he dismissed $500 million in social reinvestment funds as “soft corruption”.
In response, the Marijuana Moms penned an open letter chiding this retrograde rhetoric as reviving Anslinger’s 1930’s propaganda. They cited updated research confirming unique therapeutic benefits and moderate dependence risks relative to alternatives like alcohol or pharmaceuticals.
Kenneally’s rebuttal then attacked them personally as industry shills, further politicizing legitimate science. He failed addressing mammoth gaps in logic causally linking regulated access with complex systemic societal issues.
Essentially the exchange crystallizes enduring tensions around cannabis legalization – a flawed criminalization paradigm clinging to power versus pragmatic calls for health-centered reform. One side leans on fear and control, the other public education and freedom.
While broader cultural preferences trend clearly away from prohibitionist strong-arming, some pockets of stubborn resistance remain fighting the inevitable rather than focusing efforts more constructively on transitioning to legalization’s realities. Continued false propaganda only postpones progress.
But eventually truth prevails, and the Marijuana Moms stand firmly on the right side of science and history in this pivotal struggle. When even usually law-and-order Chicago Tribune concedes regulation’s sensibility, the once formidable prohibition fortress groans under its own contradictions.
The future lies not in reflexive blame and doubled-down denial but acknowledging complex nuance and shepherding necessary change with care, courage and community. Mothers know such wisdom well instinctively – may we follow their lead once more against tired tyrannies.
A key irony of prohibitionists invoking science exists in their glaringly anti-scientific worldview. Banning research and open inquiry contradicts academia’s core tenets. Yet the drug war embargoed whole realms of study, stymying knowledge of unique remedies emerging from nature’s pharmacy.
The imperial DEA still prohibits exploring profound healing modalities like psychedelic psychotherapy despite overwhelming evidence of breakthroughs treating depression, addiction and PTSD. Their denialism ignores reams of trials abroad that regulators call “transformational”.
So while prohibitionists eagerly cite isolated cannabis studies suggesting some societal harm, they ignore opposing findings on unique benefits or mountains of data showing wider damage from alcohol and pharmaceuticals. Selectivity belies objectivity.
Equally, they dismiss logical extrapolations about how legal access allows balancing rights, risks and safeguards instead of forfeiting control to chaotic black markets ruled by poverty and violence. Reason gets sacrificed to maintain Manichean simplicity – all illegal drugs wholly evil, total abstinence wholly virtuous.
Of course, this worldview requires ignoring history itself as well – for instance, God’s own failed prohibition efforts in Eden’s garden intended preventing suffering, not realizing alternatives exceeded imagining. Sometimes insight arises by encountering deepest shadows firsthand.
So not even divine foreknowledge accomplishes modifying free will for “the greater good” without breeding other dysfunction. By definition, coercion cannot dictate consciousness or conscience. Yet this never stops earthly impulses toward commandments and body sovereignty violations “for your own benefit”.
But the sticky truth remains, as Eden and the disastrous drug war both demonstrate – prohibition contradicts soul growth by inhibiting self-discovery and personal responsibility. Banning choices only inflates their appeal through forbidden mystique, especially among youth.
The endeavor itself seems doomed, forcing disingenuous rhetoric rationalizing oppression. Hence we suffer absurd alchemy transmuting therapeutic plant synergies into violent scourges while transforming literal poisons like alcohol and tobacco into permitted pleasures. Madness.
Prohibition warps reason itself around sustaining irrational policies ultimately fueling the problems they aim stopping. It represents human law’s intrinsic limits rather than any moral revelation. The flowers bloom in their season regardless, awaiting our awakening.
In the end, bloviating arguments invoking fear prove no match for personal testimony or common sense. And the masses tire of sophistry aimed limiting adults’ sovereignty over their minds and bodies.
Once more we witness aggrieved mothers banding together, lending their immense heart power towards transforming unjust systems laid bare. And when galvanized thusly, no force proves mightier reshaping society and policy.
For the intrinsic wisdom intertwined with shepherding new life through constant nurturing sacrifice makes the maternal perspective uniquely disruption-proof. Having created worlds gives vision beyond fear-based control. Death holds no sway over life’s guardian angels.
Hence almost no group shifts cultural tides as impactfully as fed-up moms, forcing the hand of hardened institutions. And now the Marijuana Moms invoke this eternal font, wielding its nonviolent influence against tired tyrannies on humanity’s behalf.
In many ways still fighting the same battles against the same forces as their iron-willed temperance ancestors. But with more savvy around actual outcomes beyond ideals when regulating adult behaviors with wide appeals. They understand good intentions proving hell’s pavement.
And so these mothers push us closer toward redemption and resurrection of ethics – returning healing plants unjustly demonized and restoring reason in place of profitable propaganda thriving through decades of Reefer Madness falsehoods.
They appeal to our sensibilities with truth and heart, not pedestals of hypocritical moral superiority leveraged forcibly against dissent. For coercion reveals philosophical failure before different choices emerge.
In response the lingering dinosaurs retreat into personal attacks and cynical bleating about “Big Cannabis” rather than addressing crises of credibility birthed from broken systems crumbling. It is easier making enemies than making change.
The plants spring eternal, the work of freedom ongoing. But when mothers unite behind a cause, preamble to power’s surrender comes quickly. The milk of human kindness flows on the wings of women wedding compassion to conscience.
May we join then today in celebration of these intrepid Marijuana Moms moving mountains through spoken truths our institutions and laws cannot withstand. For the greatest monuments still construct through vision and values – like families, like communities – not courts and coats of arms. And love always conquers above might.
Let mothers lead us then into healed tomorrows where freedom rings from sea to shining sea, fear dims to curiosity’s bright dawn. The doors of perception open, the obstacles of old fear stories dissolving like mirages no longer useful. Just milk and honey remain ahead.
Hark now, victory awaits heralded by merry matriarchal laughter…
MARIJUANA MOMS, A NATIONAL FORCE, READ ON…
