GO FIGURE ...

=| Cannabis is a wonderfully refreshing recreational drug ...

Imagine a freshly prepared bud of a favorite Kush, or the first of a new sativa from the California foothills. You're struck by the form of the bud itself, amazed at its colors, taken aback by the wonderfully sweet bouquet. It's a treat far superior to the best Cuban cigars

For some of us it is also the best thing one can do to augment medical treatment for a variety of afflictions, including my own issue of chronic pain.

For all of my lifetime ~ and for yours, too, unless you're a really Old Fart ~ cannabis and its users have been criminalized, demonized, and pushed to the precarious edges of Citizenship by ideologues and other fools deployed by the forces of Fear and Ignorance. Make no mistake, it is no more than that, and no better exemplified than by the cowering reluctance of Congress, state legislatures, and local governments to consider seriously & studiously just why we make war on ourselves to save ourselves from ourselves.

Much less what it costs us in wasted money, shattered lives, and squandered opportunity.

But they have had their Day. It is ending. Not quite as abruptly as Prohibition, which according to one of our Senate elders would not be repealed until someone had "strapped the Washington Monument to the tail-feathers of a hummingbird and flown to Mars," but just as surely, just as permanently, their Day is ending.

In our lives we all come to times which require us to Reformat, individually and (sometimes) collectively, to learn to Trust our own judgments, and to expand the envelope of Freedom so that we may Act accordingly. I've seen enough Changes of Season to have lived through non-violent revolutions which have restored what we consider 'natural' rights to women, to people of color, to those whose sexual nature or choices offend ...

I want to live long enough to be able to cultivate on my own property unencumbered by external coercion, to see all non-violent drug 'criminals' restored to their citizenship, and to enjoy the fruits of an unfettered social and scientific (re)examination of the world's most interesting plant.

By direct vote of the People in 1996, California unshackled our Right to be "free of Fear and Ignorance," we have since dragged ourselves into the sacred realm of Citizenship ~ Praise to the many Heroes who have rolled this rock up the hill for the benefit of all ! I live and work in California part of the year, near the coast somewhere north of Malibu and south of Big Sur.

I am certified as a medical cannabis patient; I am also a care-giver and cultivator, and politically engaged in support of a very effective public-interest group speaking on behalf of all involved in the medical cannabis industry.

Therefore, I am a Citizen.

The rest of the year I live and work in the Upper Great Lakes, in a state I dearly love but which does not, as yet, recognize cannabis as having any medical value.

Therefore, I am an Outlaw.

And I'm mad as hell about it, you better believe.

18:42 10/1/2008