Prop 19: When Stoners Stop Being Seen as Deviants

The last California Gubernatorial election showed me a few things; one, no matter how much people hate the Democratic AND Republican nominee, almost all the votes still go to only those two parties. And two, pot is still a bane of society.

I remember, a few weeks before the vote, some stoner friends were saying they weren't going to vote; fearing legalization would only hurt their medicinal status and that marijuana would be outrageously taxed. This confusion is one thing that led to the failure to pass Proposition 19.

It's not just confused stoners (and some anti-pot sandbagging) though; reading though articles online, you see comments like "I don't recognize the right to get high," and similar sentiments. The fact of the matter is, whether or not you recognize the right to get high (or drunk for that matter), it's still a right (or should be, in the case of the former).

Somehow, we need to change people's perception; stoners are still seen as degenerates and hippy deviants. You could show them the cancer patients who smoke cannabis or the elderly with arthritis but it's not just them who matter in this; it's them and the twenty-three year old smoking for his old sports injuries and the forty-eight year old guy working in retail, getting chewed out everyday by the scum of the consumer world.

We need to remember that each one of us is human, and each of us humans have different needs; you have different needs than your daughter; your wife and son, each, have different needs too. Maybe you like the drink but your wife has always been a smoker; you compromise or you split but neither indirectly pass legislation, in the home, making it so the other can not do what it is they'd like to do. You talk to one another, like humans; like people.

We need real change in this country and we need it now! Sure for pot but also for people, for equality. We need to see each other as brothers, sisters, as one people. We have different lifestyles but why can't we live and let live? Is it possible that we are so cold to each other that, if asked, we could tell every person, eye to eye, person to person, that we say they can not do what they'd like to do; be it marry another man or, more relevant to the post, have a little weed?