The conversation at the dinner table had turned to, of all things., The Devils Lettuce..weed! You know, that evil stuff , that is, unless you can legalize it for tax and profits. Turns out, stuff used to grow wild, on every non-arctic continent! Some people cultivated it for their own use, maybe gave some as holiday gifts. More likely than not, much of U.S. and world history, even our country’s founding was likely influenced by weed. The reason history does not make a big deal of this is just that, it wasn’t a big deal! It, like a lot of other things was just there! I don’t know where and who and when, they (who the hell are “They” anyway?) decided to make this a big deal. All the crap they did really just made a huge mess out of this entire situation, made a lot of people rich (still does), depleted tax dollars and filled jail cells with relatively harmless types while allowing violent criminals and the worst of them all, politicians who should not have been roaming the streets but inhabiting those cells. So what’s the answer?
Turns out, I may have stumbled upon something here. Last Spring, every spring, Chinese Elm trees sprout seeds, the wind blows the damn things every…..insert you own word…where! I have none of those trees on my property and I gratefully thank my neighbors for the two day ritual of sucking them up with a Shop Vac. In spite of of filling many trash cans with these things, a few manage to sprout and then you spend the rest of the summer on search and destroy missions while repeating the line from the Eric Clapton song, “Kill it before it grows, he said kill it before it grows” Where was I? Honestly, I am not a user. OK, back to while I was in the weedseed cleaning phase. Two things popped into my head, first was the Cloward/Piven political strategy of overwhelming a system, second was when the class burnout in 9th grade as the teacher was discussing the legend of “Johnny Appleseed” blurted out “I’m gonna be “Johnny DopeSeed”. Think you can now see where I am going with this!
Quite personally, and you may share these feelings, you may not, we have spent way to much time, money and energy chasing this stuff around. Also quite personally, the wrong damned people are the ones getting rich off this stuff, a weed, that grew wild, part of our history, our heritage! Just realized one aspect, if it was part of our history, maybe the guys recording history forgot to include it, some things never change. Make that shit grow everywhere!!!! You got seeds? Spread em around, don’t wait for the lights flashing in your rear-view mirror to toss them out the window…toss them out now! Even that neighbor with the crappy trees, give them something to really grow in his yard! Those smug hippy bastards down at the dispensary who charge you a hundred bucks for a few seeds, here’s your chance to repay them! Now, local politicians and law enforcement will go nuts, make some campaign promises, but lets face it, this will get the best of them and they can then clear this issue from their plates and do some real open field running, like catching, murderers, rapists, human traffickers, hard drug dealers, and a few politicains here and there!