Maybe it’s marijuana’s cultural baggage of Deadheads, dreadlocked Rastafarians, and psychedelic paraphernalia that does it, but there’s something about cannabis that brings out the school marm in certain segments of the population. It just makes the members of the more conservative contingent feel like their neckties are too tight, like their worldview is still endangered by the cultural descendants of the hippies who hoisted a green, smoke-wreathed flag in the turmoil of the ’60s.
But that’s a cartoonish, puritanical view of a plant that’s been around for millennia. Evidence from tombs in Asia reveals cannabis’ use as a psychoactive substance at least as far back as 3,000 B.C., and conjecture places its cultivation as far back as 12,000 years. American views were mostly formed in the past century, in the wake of Mexican immigration during the Mexican Revolution. Whether the resulting fear of psychoactive marijuana was about the plant or about the ethnicity of its then-primary smokers is a matter for debate, but regardless, it became illegal in 1937.
It was a curious turn for a plant with such close ties to America — it turns out the Puritans weren’t exactly puritanical when it came to hemp. Psychoactive use or no, the strain of cannabis that was necessary to rope- and sail-making was all the rage in the Jamestown colony. Even the founding fathers had no problem with the stuff. Unfortunately, 20th-century legislation did not discriminate between industrial and psychoactive hemp.
Maybe the contemporary anti-cannabis crusaders don’t realize how much of their opposition to marijuana is just a cultural thing. Many who voice their disapproval think nothing of imbibing alcohol, which certainly offers mood-altering effects and a host of unpleasant and dangerous drunken tendencies that don’t come with marijuana use. No movement for medical alcohol exists because so far, no clear medical use for alcohol exists, unless you’re a Civil War doctor who performs amputations with a bottle of rotgut and a bullet to bite.
Even if most of your marijuana information comes from Reefer Madness, you shouldn’t oppose legalizing medical marijuana or industrial hemp. Not only is cannabis an industrial crop with a host of uses from food to fuel and clothing, the science of medical marijuana is fast emerging, and the early results have fueled its increasing availability as a medicine. It’s legit, promising stuff, and its potential uses, from treating migraines to cancer and Parkinson’s, ought to outweigh the discomfort of anti-drug crusaders who at times seem to mostly be afraid that someone, somewhere will have too good a time.
Though the pro-cannabis forces seem to be prevailing in the slow push for full legalization, the culture clash of pro- and anti-cannabis contingents and the complications of legislation and law enforcement are creating a bewildering landscape for patients, growers, sellers, and even artists to navigate. It’s clear that those complications have real, detrimental effects, even on people trying their best to do things within the law. Take medical marijuana patient Julianne Dandy, one of Amanda Drane’s subjects in “The Promise of Pot” — Dandy uses it successfully for relief from chronic pain. Still, she says, “I don’t know what’s legal or not anymore.” She’s afraid to take her marijuana along on a trip to see family, uncertain what might happen during a layover in Texas.
Jim Robinson, owner of Jim Buddy’s Vapeshop in Chicopee and also a subject in Drane’s story, faced a high-stakes gamble in his role as “caregiver,” someone who’s allowed to grow cannabis to supply patients. In 2012, new laws allowed caregivers to grow for any number of patients. In 2013, the state said caregivers could only grow for themselves and one other person. Robinson and others had to decide whether to comply, and potentially never recoup large up-front investments.
In “Underground Glass,” glassblower Chris Hubbard tells about his experiences as a medical marijuana patient and beginning pipemaker in Washington state. Law enforcement suspected that his amateur glass studio was a meth lab, and sent in a SWAT team. By the time the dust settled, Hubbard ended up with a conviction for displaying medical marijuana, and costs and fines of around $18,000.
At the Enthusiast smokeshop in Greenfield, manager Kaeli Wickline told reporter Hunter Styles (in the story “Cloud Control”) that the store’s pipes and other smoking equipment are supposed to be used with tobacco and other legal substances, including medical marijuana. “It’s still a gray area for us, to be perfectly honest. We don’t want to cross any lines.”
Northampton medical marijuana consultant Ezra Parzybok employs a metaphor to explain why this confusion exists: “Say there’s a loud frat house, and you’re going to regulate it. So you put the lady next door who always complains about the noise in charge of regulating it. The Department of Public Health has been, for years, keeping [marijuana] out of people’s hands. Now they’re in charge of regulating it.”
Bay State Repeal recently filed three versions of marijuana legalization law, hoping to get the question on the ballot in an upcoming election. What those proposed laws provide is exactly what the state (if not nation) needs: simplicity. Whether it’s your thing or not, marijuana is emerging as a worthwhile substance. We owe those who embrace it — for any use — laws that leave no gray areas.•
The greyest area of all, the least addressed even by all the proposed reforms coming from voters or introduced in the house is the nebulous fate of patients in hardship. I would like help to research how much of the medical marijuana demographic is living in Section 8 housing, prohibited by federal law from doing precisely what the current law in Massachusetts tells qualifying patients are now legal to do.
Rachel, BSR’s proposals provide a way for the most vulnerable you describe in the addition of:
Section 31A Acquisition, cultivation, possession and transportation of marihuana for
private use by persons 21 years of age and older
This chapter shall not apply to the acquisition, possession, consumption, cultivation and
transportation of marihuana by persons over the age of 21,
or to 2 or more such persons
who do not share a single household who agree to use land or buildings owned or rented by
1 or more such persons for the cultivation of marihuana for their personal use
and that of
their household members and guests over the age of 21, provided that the places of
cultivation and storage comply with section 31B and that when transported in a motor
vehicle such marihuana shall be secured in sealed packaging, or not in the passenger area
of the vehicle, as defined in section 24I of chapter 90 of the General Laws.
This permits someone not living in my house to grow marihuana with me for their use in circumstance you describe.
The dimmest grey area, the least addressed in the current DPH regulations and even in any recent iterations of possible legal reforms, is the dilemma of patients in hardship. Demographically, patients with chronic, debilitating conditions can’t work, are poor more often than not, I want to do the research but I would guess more than half of us subsist on stipends, we’re housed in subsidized dwelling units regulated by federal programs. No one is proposing a way for the most vulnerable to afford the personal grow infrastructure it takes to do a medical grow at home, nor a way around the clear prohibition against doing so stated in the leases that we’ve signed. We’re at risk of homelessness and losing our housing vouchers forever if we’re caught doing what our state law grants homeowners, in rather less hardship, to do for themselves or as caregivers for others.