Burn One Down

Listen while you read:  https://youtu.be/uhKq9JvssB8

Let us burn one from end to end
And pass it over to me, my friend
Burn it long; we'll burn it slow
To light me up before I go

If you don't like my fire
Then don't come around
'Cause I'm gonna burn one down
Yes, I'm gonna burn one down

My choice is what I choose to do
And if I'm causing no harm, it shouldn't bother you
Your choice is who you choose to be
And if you're causing no harm, then you're all right with me

~  Ben Harper

Yesterday's bad news revealed that U. S. Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and the Department of Justice intend to step up enforcement of federal law against recreational marijuana.  So I guess "states' rights" don't apply to matters that deal with the harmless exercise of entertainment choices?  Despite evidence to the contrary, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration still categorizes cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it is considered "a substance that has a high potential of being abused and has no acceptable medical uses."  Well, guns have a high potential of being abused, but I digress.  No medical uses?  Tell that to all those suffering from cancer, PTSD, Alzheimers, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, and hundreds of other conditions.  Tell that to the 26 states (and the District of Columbia) that have laws legalizing marijuana in some form.

As of now, the threat to interfere in the legal use of marijuana in over half of the United States is not focused on medical marijuana, but I do not feel comfortable about this step backward.  My son lives in Colorado, the first state to legalize marijuana back in 2012, and when I visited him there last summer, we went to a couple of dispensaries to find they were clean, well-run, and staffed by knowledgable and courteous people.  Illegal means of procuring pot in Colorado has declined, and the state has brought in over a billion dollars in tax revenue in 2016.  The stigma of opting for marijuana as a drug of choice, along with the stealth and secrecy of obtaining it, is gone.  (Remember Prohibition?)

Ben Harper's "Burn One Down," referred to as "a James Taylor meets Bob Marley moment" for him, was included in his 1995 release Fight for Your Mind.  It is his most-performed song at concerts.  And nearly 20 years after the release of that song, change finally began.  But Americans' use of marijuana goes back much farther than those 20 years.  My awareness of it occurred somewhere in the mid-60s, but anyone who knows of the 1936 cult film Reefer Madness knows that marijuana's reputation as an illegal gateway drug was a mid-century invention.

There are so many problems that need to be addressed in this country.  Smoking a joint isn't one of them.  A recent poll showed that 59% of Americans think marijuana should be legal while 71% are opposed to a federal crackdown.  And is it a coincidence that on the same day that Sessions issued this threat, he also reversed an Obama-era DOJ memo that would have reduced the federal use of private prisons, sending their stocks soaring?  Now, how can we fill those prisons . . .

As Bill Maher responded to the news, "No way I am doing these four years straight."

If I'm causing no harm, it shouldn't bother you.  Amen.