This is Mark the Voter; today I’m going to talk about IM 29, the ballot measure that proposes legalization of recreational marijuana. Previously I wrote articles about abortion (Amendment G) and open primaries (Amendment H) on this blog site.
To date — South Dakota passed a medical marijuana bill in 2022, making it among the 38 states that have provisions for medical marijuana; 24 states have legalized both recreational and medical marijuana.
Water is unique among basic compounds for its ability to exist in three states — liquid, solid, gas – (but never at the same time). Marijuana is unique among plants for its ability to function in three uses – medicinal, recreational, industrial – (but at the same time?)
My background with marijuana is extensive, and I’ll clue you that it’s neither with medicinal nor industrial use.
Now, I tell you this not because I need to make confession/get absolution, but because I want the reader to understand that when I talk about recreational pot, I’m being AUTHENTIC.
If memory serves me (and surprisingly it still does), pot was widely acceptable among many in South Dakota society – at least in my society. That was back in the mid-1970s and going far into the 80s; beyond that I really can’t say because I dropped out of that scene around 1986.
My society seemed hardly concerned about getting busted for pot. We went around with sandwich bags containing ‘a lid’ (ounce) stuffed in our jeans or coat pockets, or we carried 35-mm film canisters (anyone remember analog photography?) with enough pot to roll 3-4 ‘joints’. Until I graduated to rolling joints with just my fingers I carried a clever little accessory, a pocket-sized rolling machine that had a tiny canvas that did the trick. A few aficionados brandished brass bat ‘hitters’ that fired up a single hit, and at home, hidden under beds or in closets, we often had an assortment of ‘bongs’ (water pipes akin to a ‘hookah’) ranging in quality from cheap plastic tubes to ornate ceramic figurines – oh, we had good sneaky fun!
I don’t know why I never got busted for pot, and I know few who ever did. Law enforcement was apparently more focused on ‘hard core’ drugs and the heavy traffickers. What I was doing was obviously outside the law but I didn’t think of myself as a criminal because what I was doing seemed harmless and insignificant.
Then why did I stop using? I won’t go into that here. Summing it up, getting high didn’t really work for me in the same way it does for Willie Nelson, or it did for Jimmy Buffett. I had pressing matters, and pot just seemed to make my mind run circles around my imagination. It was no longer for me.
But who was I to say that it wasn’t for them? Small wonder then that I’ve been fairly tolerant of marijuana trends in the ensuing years. As far as I knew it had mostly disappeared. I was aware that some of the Old Gang were still getting ‘loaded’ (high), but that was their business.
So I’ve been hit off-guard with the advent of the marijuana ballot measures of late. I didn’t see medical marijuana or cannabis therapy as a threat necessarily; it certainly seemed as legit as all the other addictive prescription drugs out there.
Now we are facing recreational marijuana on the ballot (IM 29), and it is obvious that marijuana is determined to be as common as liquor on the shelf and aspirin in the bathroom cabinet (do you see where I’m headed with this?) IM 29 proponents insist that as a narcotic marijuana is no different than alcohol (actually safer), yet marijuana also serves admirably as a therapeutic drug (at the same time?).
That argument doesn’t hold water – liquid, solid, or gas. Are we expected to believe that cannabis intoxication is somehow more excusable than drunkenness? We need to acknowledge that neither should be commended or sanctioned by society. Prescription marijuana is meant for the ailing, recreational marijuana is meant for intoxication. Medical marijuana arguably fulfils a therapeutic use, recreational marijuana use is as a narcotic, and for this reason should remain a contraband substance.
Since my water/marijuana analogy might not work for everybody who’s reading this, I won’t press it any further. But I can speak with authority as someone who’s ‘been there’ with recreational pot:
- Getting high doesn’t make you any smarter (we used to mockingly refer to it as ‘getting stupid’).
- Pot users don’t use in a casual manner for ‘a lift’ in the same way people have a drink or two to ‘take off the edge’. Like any other narcotic, if the effect is somehow short of the euphoric ‘feel good factor’ that if offers, then it hasn’t actually been worthwhile.
- Some will credit pot for enhanced creativity and insight, but the experience is mostly self-absorption and altered perception (the same can be achieved by reading a book).
- Because of its tendencies toward self-absorption and altered perception, marijuana use and child-rearing are at odds (getting stoned in front of children is both selfish and careless, not at all conducive to the stable environment that children need. If you are going to ‘check out for a while’ let it be in meditation/prayer.
- We don’t need to apologize to pot users because their preferred narcotic hasn’t been made legal; obviously it’s been available enough for them to become avid supporters (but haven’t you already had enough to smoke?)
So, there we have it — when a therapy morphs into becoming a narcotic, a line has been crossed; I am among those who feel compelled to hold that line. For this reason, I am voting ‘No’ on IM 29, and I hope you’ll do the same.
That’s all from Mark the Voter. Thank you!
