By MARK SARDELLA
MARK SARDELLA
Today is a big day for the Massachusetts Cannabis Community.
Dec. 15, 2016 – a day that will live, if not in infamy, then certainly in idiocy.
At 4:20 p.m. today, thousands of senile hippies and their millennial grandchildren will share a bong hit to celebrate the fact that decades of oppressive “prohibition” have come to an end in Massachusetts.
It’s now perfectly legal in Massachusetts to spark up a doobie and get totally wasted.
If that isn’t progress worth celebrating, I don’t know what is. Good to know that we’re setting the bar high in our state.
It’s a victory for ignorance as much as anything.
I have no doubt that most of the people who voted “Yes” on Question 4 never actually read even part of the proposed 12-page law legalizing recreational pot. Mostly, they just believed the propaganda shelled out by the Marijuana Industry and its paid “marijuana consultants.”
For yes, such “jobs” actually exist along with cannabis accountants and bong barristers. You’ll be hearing a lot from them in the coming months as they guide their clients in setting up new businesses in communities across the state that are now trying to sort out how to deal with this new “industry.”
Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club meetings will never be the same.
Thanks to the well-funded campaign of deception funded by the multi-billion-dollar Marijuana Industry, many people thought that this new law simply made it legal for people to share a joint with friends and not worry about getting arrested. Apparently they didn’t get the memo that no one has been arrested for sparking one up in Massachusetts since 2012, when pot was decriminalized. What we’ve now done is legitimize a for-profit industry that will be able to use legitimate avenues to market and advertise their product to more and more “customers.”
I’m looking forward to people’s reactions when they learn that their next door neighbor, whose kid is their child’s playmate, can now have up to 10 ounces of weed and grow up to 12 plants in his home.
I can’t wait to watch the color drain from people’s faces when they find out that under the new law they’ll have to worry about their kids and pets getting ahold of a whole host of legal, high-potency marijuana “edibles” including cookies, candies and “baked” goods packaged to look just like existing products.
But don’t worry. “Nobody ever died from marijuana, dude,” as our stoner friends are fond of telling us. I love how they set the bar at “death.” As if no harm short of death is worth avoiding.
“Alcohol and tobacco cause a lot more damage than weed, man,” they tell us.
That’s very true, and you know why? It’s because they’re legal.
Given the huge cost to society from legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco, I’ve got a great idea. Let’s legalize a third drug that gets you intoxicated like alcohol and that you inhale into your lungs like tobacco. What could possibly go wrong?
I’ve been accused of obsessing over this issue and exaggerating the disaster that legalization will be. Trust me – I haven’t even scratched the surface of the mess that is about to ensue.
If it’s no big deal, why are cities and towns across the state scrambling to at least keep retail pot shops out of their communities? Nearly three-quarters of towns in Colorado have prohibited marijuana businesses. What do they know that we don’t?
But what’s done is done. Once something’s made legal, you can’t go back make it illegal again. It just doesn’t work. The history of Prohibition in the 1920s taught us that you can’t put the rum genie back in the bottle.
Well, guess what? You can’t put the smoke back in the bong either. We’re stuck with legal weed now and forever.
Welcome to the Commonwealth of Marichusetts, the Stoner State.
