Medical Marijuana Misery
By Bernie on 23 Apr 2009
When I was fourteen years old (1959) I used to hang around in the Village spending most of my nights explaining the origins of the Universe to a small crowd who would gather at the Cafe Wha? to hear me. I vaguely recall my lectures: I basically rehashed theories I read in physics books and embellished them with my imagination. What I do remember though quite clearly is that almost every week some listener would ask me if I had read "The Fountainhead."
And so one sunny afternoon I was passing a used bookstore and came across a paperback copy of Ayn Rand's first commercially successful book. The cover was intriguing: it only had the author's name and the title on a creamy eggshell background with some kind of nebulous arty-shmarty thing in the middle - but nothing to describe what it was all about. I was going to read a few pages to see if it was worth buying but it had a price of only 35 cents written in pencil on the inside cover and since everyone was suggesting I should read it, I bought it.
Those who've read Ayn Rand will understand how it changed my life. Those who haven't, well, what are you waiting for? I should mention that if you are a Muslim you will not enjoy the experience.
I later learned that Ayn Rand was born in 1905 in Russia and that her views on collectivism were no doubt inspired when the Bolsheviks broke into her father's pharmacy at night and took it over as a property of the state.
What made me think of this is a recent blog article I read regarding a similar raid on a medical dispensary in California by our own American Gestapo, that is to say, federal drug agents 1.
In 1970, as Editor of my college paper, I wrote an editorial asking for Marijuana to be legalized 2. I still hold to that opinion and all the waste of money, resources and human lives in the decades since only convinces me that I was right all along.
Thirty years after I read "The Fountainhead," the Soviet Union began its collapse. Anyone growing up during the Cold War never thought it would happen in their lifetime. But if the Berlin Wall can come down, then perhaps there's hope that this insane, wasteful, futile, inhumane War on Drugs will end in my lifetime.
Notes
(1):
Charlie Lynch is a California resident who owned and operated a medical marijuana dispensary that was fully legal under a Golden State law.
In 2007, federal agents and San Luis Obispo sheriffs raided his home and dispensary and in 2008 he was found guilty in federal court of five counts of distributing drugs.
Because he was tried in a federal court, Lynch's defense team was not allowed to argue that its client was fully complying with state law.
On Thursday, April 23, 2009, Lynch is scheduled to be sentenced. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and, despite some positive statements from the Obama administration's Justice Department about respecting state laws regarding medical marijuana, Lynch's future is darker than midnight. Indeed, the simple letter of the law dictates he go to prison.
Link to Charles C. Lynch Website here.
(2):
Planck's Constant, Drugs and the Never-ending War
The only thing we have gotten out of this war on drugs is the largest prison population in the world. We also made criminals out of millions of people who would never have been criminals. I'm surprised that Democrats, who pretend to be the supporters of black people, have not tried to end the War on Drugs.
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