Ten Reasons Why MMJ Is Cannabis Commerce’s Ball And Chain

 Part 10: Fuck the patients

Herbal rights are inside this giant silver ball. You just have to get them out.

I know. “Fuck the patients” is not a reason.

It’s a declaration. A brazen declaration, to say the least.

What sort of sick, twisted mind titles an article “Fuck the patients” anyway?

One that’s onto the fact that repealing prohibition solves a problem for every patient, while solving a problem for every patient creates a bigger problem for everyone else.

In this case, the superiorly sick and twisted mind of the late, great comedian George Carlin provided the inspiration with his classic rant, “Fuck The Children.”

Here’s a sample from Carlin’s charmingly titled shtick:

Something else I’m getting tired of . . . all this stupid bullshit we have to listen to all the time about children. That’s all you hear in this country: help the children, what about the children, save the children. You know what I say? “Fuck the children! Fuck ‘em”. They are getting entirely too much attention. And I know what you’re thinking: “Jesus! He’s not going to attack children, is he?” Yes he is! He’s going to attack children! I know that you single dads and soccer moms who think you are such fucking heroes are not going to like this, but somebody has to tell you for your own good. Your children are over-rated and over-valued, you have turned them into little cult objects. You have child fetish. And it’s not healthy. —the late great comedian George Carlin.

If a beloved entertainer like Carlin can go after children, patients are fair game, too:

Something else I’m getting tired of . . . all this stupid bullshit we have to listen to all the time about patients. That’s all you hear in this country: help the patients, what about the patients, save the patients. You know what I say? “Fuck the patients. Fuck ‘em.” They are getting entirely too much attention. And I know what you’re thinking: “Jesus! He’s not going to attack patients, is he?” Yes he is! He’s going to attack patients! I know that you patient rights groups who think you are such fucking heroes are not going to like this, but somebody has to tell you for your own good. Your patients are over-rated and over-valued, you have turned them into cult objects. You have patient fetish. And it’s not healthy. —Cannabis Commerce’s Lory Kohn, channeling the late great comedian George Carlin.

The attack had to come.

I waited for someone else to lead the charge.

No one else did.

If he was still around, Stoner George surely would have struck comedic gold riffing on patient rights and patient rights groups. But the self-proclaimed “old fuck” is dead. I think he’d be OK with me taking it from here. His ghost may check in from time to time. Hark! It speaketh now:

You patient rights groups who think you are such fucking heroes are not going to like this, but somebody has to tell you for your own good.

For cunning young Ursula, defeating the tamper-proof medibles packaging wasn’t much of a challenge.

Why would anyone attack patients? Could it be because a fight for patient rights is a fight against everyone’s rights — a stance that’s characteristic of government by royalty, not democracy?

Affirmative. That’s one reason.

The rallying cry, “We must have safe access for the patients,” is another.

That’s the mantra champion groups holler from the highest mountaintops. For whatever reason, they conveniently omit the word “only.” Let’s add it where it belongs:

“We must have safe access for the patients only.”

Apparently, patients deserve reserve berths on the upper deck of The Titanic. It’s patients only up there. In the worldview MMJ mouthpieces describe, patients belong to the Brahman caste. Therefore they are entitled to the best of everything. In this class system, patients get the Cannabis Cup buds, while everyone else is left scrounging around for seeds and stems — and it’s questionable whether they even rate schwag. Maybe on Thanksgiving.

Patient rights groups are certainly entitled to their elitist stance — however extraterrestrial it may be.

But does it make them untouchable? I think not.

Does it provoke me to say what’s never been said before? Why, yes. It does.

I know what you’re thinking: “Jesus! He’s not going to attack patients, is he?” Yes he is! He’s going to attack patients!

It’s not all that surprising that after two years of observing MMJ’s socioeconomic side effects from the vantage point of my own vibrant hood, my view of patients and patient rights groups was formed from a slightly different angle. It’s a view which can be summed up in three words that are short, sweet, and right to the point:

“Fuck the patients!

What gets a guy who actually enjoyed a happy childhood on a jag like that in the first place?

Good question. I’ll answer it with “Ten reasons [within ten reasons] why making it all about the patients sucks for everyone else.” Drum roll, please. Reason #1:

1. Making legalization all about the patients keeps the DEA in business. Patient rights groups seldom muster much of a challenge to the DEA’s basic tenets like “pot is a gateway drug,” “pot causes brain damage,” and “cannabis is a Schedule One drug” to alter rulings in the court of public opinion. Their failure to successfully challenge the status quo preserves the DEA as an entrenched institution — keeping the agency fundable forever. It’s recent saber rattling, releasing a statement “reinforcing the intent of the federal government to interfere with state medical cannabis laws,” inexplicably blindsighted patient rights supporters. I fail to see why that announcement is shocking to them. Are federal agencies not supposed to enforce federal laws? If you want federal interference to cease and desist, go after federal prohibition laws.
2. “Safe access for patients” is all MMJ activists want. OMG! The DEA’s thinking, “This is really way too good to be true.” Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske’s prayers have been answered: “I can’t believe that’s all they’re asking for. There is a god!” The vast numbers of Americans who favor repealing prohibition could easily storm the DEA fortifications in Arlington, VA, and put the cover-up-prone organization out of its misery. But no — MMJ proponents have tunnelvision for medicinal use, medicinal use, and nothing but medicinal use. How the DEA handles recreational use and industrial use is unimportant since it’s out of sight, out of mind.
3. It splits marijuana advocates into two camps. It’s patient rights groups vs. everyone’s rights groups — with everyone losing literally and figuratively. If activists dream about defeating eighty years of prohibition, unification is the way forward. Not this. Diminished power along with division in the ranks is music to the DEA’s ears. I think I hear Kerlikowske singing in the shower, “Heaven, I’m in heaven, and I seem to find the drug busts that I seek …”
4. It’s un-American. What happened to Valley Forge mentality? Sometimes you have to wait things out just a little longer to get what’s near and dear to you … for everyone. What happened to “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few?” Throughout 235 years of American rights struggles, no other movement went to the wall to obtain one twentieth of what it had coming to it. It’s unimaginable. Until now. Imagine the Declaration of Independence starting, “We, the patients, hold the following truths to be self-evident …” Or The Constitution stating, “We, the patients of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution for the [Patients of the] United States of America.” What happened to the spirit of dissent? If patient rights groups time-traveled to Boston in 1776, they would have immediately caved to the Brits. “Pay more tea taxes? Sure. How much?”
5. Patient rights groups assume the sick and dying aren’t getting any “meds” without their intervention. That’s true some of the time, but hardly all of the time. Someone’s been buying that $115 billion worth of pot every year. Government buds have been available for the worst cases since 1974. But doesn’t “medical marijuana” have some special pain-relieving property that “marijuana” lacks? No. There is no standard for potency or purity which qualifies a bud to be sold as “medical marijuana” in any state. Dispensaries can sell ditch weed as MMJ if they so desire, although that’s rare.
6. Guaranteeing patients “safe access” guarantees the rest of us no access. And the limbo might last forever. I’m supposed to have sympathy for a group that builds a Berlin Wall between me and my buds? How much sympathy do patients have for me? Or, more specifically, how much sympathy do patients rights groups have for me? Less than I have for the patients, I can assure you. How much do patients and/or patients rights groups care about you or your ambition to support yourself and your family by making a go of cannabis commerce? Zero. Zilch. None. Nada. It hasn’t occurred to them that you can have a job and they can have a cure.
7. Because other people actually count. I’m callous enough to think that I count, and that you and your family count, too. But, if you’re not a member of the elite patients club, even a skinny, lipstick-stained, half-inch roach that’s been in an ashtray for two months is nothing more than a mirage.
8. Never before in the history of activism has an entire “movement” pandered to one special interests group. Then that group enters indentured servitude the second it “wins” its MMJ initiative.
9. 75% of patients are “fraudulent” patients perpetuating a hypocritical situation. And that guesstimate is just me being conservative; others feel the actual number is closer to 80%. When purchasing at a dispensary, you have to transact in patient-speak even if you qualified for a MMJ license with a tall tale for a recommending physician like, “Yeah, I was run over by a threshing machine in 1994. How’d ya know?” Wink wink. It’s a game of make believe for 75% of the precious ones. Which begs the question: if someone has tapeworms crawling out their mouth, nostrils and ears, why exactly does that qualify them for the right to buy marijuana overground, while every healthy American — or truthful American — must forage for it underground? Maybe I was fantasizing during Logic 101, because I haven’t got a clue.
10. Every “advance” for patients is a retreat for the rest of us. They say perception is reality. Old guard media — still responsible for shaping the belief systems of millions of Americans — is all about MMJ, all the time. Therefore, no other plant matter with five leaves and trichomes exists. So why even bring up prohibition? No publicity for repealing prohibition = no repealing prohibition today. No repealing prohibition today = no repealing prohibition tomorrow. No repealing prohibition tomorrow = quite possibly no repealing prohibition forever. No repealing prohibition = MMJ. MMJ = ball and chain.

That’s all you hear in this country: help the patients, what about the patients, save the patients.

The DEA unveils the latest in undercover weaponry: atomic roosters, trained to peck patients to pieces if they can’t remember the secret password, “Afghanistan Banana Stand.”

But what about the actual patients and their suffering? Am I made of stone? Do I not have any feelings? Where’s the sympathy? Where’s the empathy?

I have the same amount of compassion for the sick and dying as anyone else — until special interest groups start clacking about how patient rights supercede everyone else’s rights.

Denying everyone else “safe access” to god’s gift — as if the only way the sick and dying can get “meds” is if everyone else can’t have them — is just plain absurd.

But don’t the sick and dying need “meds” more urgently than anyone else? Yes, they do.

And that would matter if there was a shortage of MJ or MMJ.

No such shortage has ever existed, nor will it ever exist with the capability to grow indoors in massive quantities.

Of course the patients themselves aren’t necessarily the ones petitioning for special rights which exclude the rights of everyone else. Patient rights groups perform that service for them.

What’s terrifying is how well they perform it.

Let’s examine the language of exclusion rampant in patient rights rhetoric.

Examples come courtesy of ASA’s [Americans For Safe Access] Steph Scherer. My inbox is full of these. There are lots of great ones to select from. Here’s a good one for starters:

“We worked with our champion in the Senate, [Maryland] Sen. Jamie Raskin to incorporate ASA’s language, ensuring patients are protected from criminal charges.”

Read between the lines: In a perfect world, patients will receive Get Out of Jail Free cards — even though federal prohibition is still in force. Left unsaid by Ms. Scherer, ASA, and Senator Raskin: “It’s perfectly OK with us if anyone who isn’t a patient gets sent to Devil’s Island. And btw, anyone else who was already there for smoking or selling mother nature can enjoy their stay in paradise.” Nice. Speaking of sympathy and empathy, which marijuana advocacy groups turn a cold shoulder toward freeing the 45,000 pot prisoners currently serving draconian sentences for daring to trade a magical weed? Patient rights groups. It’s just not their concern. Still wondering why someone would have the audacity to title an article, “Fuck the Patients?” Next.

Your patients are over-rated and over-valued, you have turned them into cult objects.

Patients, Friends and Activists—

Obama’s administration has taken its gloves off. After giving the medical cannabis community a false sense of security, Obama’s administration continues to ignore state laws, intimidate state officials, and raid medical cannabis patients and facilities.

Read between the lines: Patient rights groups base the sort of permanent, hands-off “security” they envision [for patients only] on a vague memo from President Obama suggesting, not guaranteeing, that federal agents should allow MMCs to operate in peace — not on any official government-stamped repeal of federal marijuana prohibition. The DEA is still the DEA, Ms. Scherer, because you made the issue patients rights, not everyone’s rights. You campaigned for state MMJ initiatives when you could have worked to repeal federal prohibition. Now you want to rearrange the very structure of government to read state law trumps federal law . . . because it fits your agenda? You’re familiar with the Civil War, right? You’ve clearly come down on the side of slavery and the deployment of balls and chains to make it run more efficiently. Whatever. Btw, 11,000 DEA agents need something to do with their hands besides crochet, Sudoku and crossword puzzles. Let’s try another one.

This month, ASA launched our new national campaign, and we are sending a clear message to President Obama from the medical cannabis community: We are sick and tired. We are suffering from chronic and debilitating conditions, and we are weary of false promises that do nothing to protect our rights as patients.

Read between the lines: First off, everyone knows 75% of patients are plain old stoners with recommendations from physicians who were well-compensated to write them. The self-righteous tone is lost on them. Next, let’s zoom in on your “clear message” that the government, on all levels, should be “protecting our rights as patients.” Since when do human beings require the patient tag to rate herbal rights or protection? Where did this theory originate? What about “our rights as human beings?” As far as ASA is concerned, non-patients are non-persons. They’re “Other People,” the term the Constitution actually used to denote the shadow existence of Indians, slaves, and women. What other conclusion can be drawn from this brand of rhetoric?

You have patient fetish. And it’s not healthy.

ASA’s Sick and Tired Campaign involves approaching the federal government from several angles, and we need your help to reach every corner of Obama’s administration.

Read between the lines: ASA is an organization that wants my time and my money to carry out its stated mission to help patients only. “Other People” don’t figure in the organization’s plans. I’m sick and tired of that. ASA also wants me to go hat-in-hand to “every corner of the Obama administration,” begging for crumbs. Supplicating to the Obama administration is not going to cut it. There’s been way too much of that already. Where has that got us? The Obama administration doesn’t understand “pretty please.” It’ll understand Marijunamarch 2012 perfectly well when a half million true believers improvise a tent city on the Capitol mall. The question is, will Ms. Scherer rally her charges to appear in support of an egalitarian cause that isn’t all about them? Unlikely, but you never know.

Patient rights groups help keep the windows washed here at DEA headquarters in Arlington, VA.

ASA is hardly the only group spouting patient-centric gibberish. I just received this inspired burst of insanity from The Ohio Medical Cannabis Act [OMCA]:

A well regulated, state-wide system governing the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of medical cannabis, for the sole benefit of Ohio’s sick and dying, provides the strongest form of protection for patients and the citizens of Ohio.

Read between the lines: OK, that’s one too many. I’m stunned. I’m speechless. Forget English. Yiddish is the language of choice choice for those moments when all you can possibly manage is a two-letter exclamation:

“Oy!”

“The balls and chains are coming! The balls and chains are coming!”

The operative phrase in OMCA’s bondage plan entreaty is “for the sole benefit of Ohio’s sick and dying.”

How much plainer can OMCA state their aim?

You may be wondering how a system set up “for the sole benefit of Ohio’s sick and dying” provides “the strongest form of protection for the citizens of Ohio.”

Protection against what, you ask?

• Protection against lower caste “Other People” ever getting their grubby mitts on any pot.
• Protection against obtaining cannajobs, earning appreciable cannabucks, or collecting difference-making cannatax is already built into the Amendment.
• This is unbridled joy for the DEA. The once-beleaguered agency may as well break ground on additional training facilities. Looks like they’ll be needed over the long haul. Never know when that next nest of vipers will need cleaning out.

Grohioans, get ready for the high-quality harassment you’re self-sentencing yourselves to.

Can you guess what’s coming next, or do you need me to go on a midnight ride warning, “The balls and chains are coming! The balls and chain are coming!”

Remember, when you’re dragging yours around, it’s 105 degrees, humidity is 80 percent, you’re fifteen hours away from completing your sixteen-hour shift, and you’re shocked that the feds are interfering with your hogtied industry, you asked for it.

And I guess I asked for it with the title, too.

Now, with the end in sight, exasperated by the OMCA proposal an apparent cinch to pass in Ohio, exhausted from swimming against the MMJ riptide, expecting certain crucifixion if I can somehow claw my way back ashore, all I’ve got left in me is one last gasp … of pidgeon Yiddish.

It’s a takeoff on the City College fight song from its glory days of yesteryear, and it goes a little something like this:

Medical marivana . . . seat from learning
Medical marivana mit a sis boom bah
Medical marivana . . . seat from learning
Medical marivana mit a sis boom bah

We von we von . . . vat, we lost?

“You’ve had your last bong hit, Flash! Even Justice League of America superheros are powerless against our balls and chains!”