Mikki Norris
I have been a cannabis consumer for over 40 years and a cannabis activist for the last 27, so I am well aware what cannabis is, what it does and what consequences the prohibition against it have wrought.
What I have learned is that the cannabis plant has many beneficial uses – it can help sick people treat their various illnesses and ailments, aches and pains, and relatively healthy people enhance their well-being.
It adds a spiritual dimension to life, nature, and the universe and enhances the senses and makes food taste better, music sound better and sex more titillating. It creates a sense of community, social bonding, and empathy when people from diverse walks of life share a joint together and makes some boring things more interesting and fun.
It’s a relaxant that can help calm the nerves and take the mind off of work or negative thoughts and on to more positive things. It awakens and encourages creative and critical thinking and implores the partakers to work for social justice and the environment, which could be greatly restored by developing its industrial hemp potential.
I know that cannabis isn’t for everybody. Kids shouldn’t use it unless they have a serious medical need. Some people just don’t like it, or get an unwelcome response, and I respect their adult choice not to use it. I have a problem, though, with the laws and the misdirected stigma and discrimination that have resulted from its criminalization.
Cannabis consumers are some of the nicest, most intelligent, honest, hard working, creative and compassionate people I know. We shouldn’t be criminalized for using or growing it, or have to live our lives in the closet for fear that we could lose our jobs or kids or benefits or respect for admitting using it.
Good people shouldn’t be vulnerable to arrest, incarceration or asset forfeiture because of it, either.
In my book, Shattered Lives: Portraits from America’s Drug War, I have seen and documented the devastation that our drug policies have created, the human rights violations that have been committed, the lives disrupted and destroyed that have led to mass incarceration rates, and a subversion of our constitutional protections and freedoms, only to feed into the Prison/Drug War Industrial Complex which continues the failed drug war.
My husband, Chris Conrad, is a marijuana expert witness in the courts, and we get calls and emails everyday from attorneys who need help defending their cases, without which their clients will be facing prison sentences on just a cop’s word.
People are still getting arrested long after the passage of Prop. 215 — which did not really legalize medical use but created a limited immunity defense for those with a doctor’s recommendation.
Growers, patients, caregivers, vendors, transporters, dispensary owners and personal gardeners are still getting picked up, raided and charged or deported despite their doctors’ notes.
Some people hold the mistaken belief that people in California aren’t getting arrested anymore and our laws work just fine … until it’s their turn to face law enforcement. Tell that to the African American and Latino communities and young people who keep getting picked up and charged at disproportionate rates, ruining their futures with criminal records.
Marijuana prohibition has gone on for 103 years in California now. Enough already! That’s why I’m excited that we will have an opportunity to take the next step and move away from this reefer-madness-racist-prohibitionist paradigm this November with the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA) legalization measure headed to the ballot.
For the first time in my life, I can see a light at the end of the tunnel and the beginning of the end of prohibition. I can see the day where adults 21 and over can legally use, possess, share, give away, transport, and grow small amounts of cannabis.
I can see a welcoming place where people can legally buy and consume quality cannabis products at affordable prices and where adults will be able to come out of the closet and be themselves, without the shame of a criminal label.
AUMA is good for cannabis users as it gives adults legal standing in society and consumer protections. I welcome labeling and dosing requirements on my edibles so I will know how much to eat at night to help me sleep and not have to guess at the dose. It’s really not fun to eat too much.
Consumers would no longer be subject to harassment or unreasonable searches as cannabis would no longer be contraband. As has happened in the four states that have already legalized, arrests and incarcerations will drop significantly.
AUMA greatly reduces most marijuana penalties, which is helpful and will free up court costs, time and jail space and enable law enforcement to focus on serious and violent crimes. For those hampered by criminal records for marijuana, AUMA provides much needed relief.
Marijuana offenders will be able to get their records reduced, expunged or even released from jail, and to work and get licensed in the emerging cannabis industry. It will make new tax revenue and resources available to communities disproportionately harmed by drug war abuses to help people rebuild their lives and communities.
Minors who get in trouble for their “youthful indiscretions” upon turning 18 will not get criminal records, but will get honest drug education or counseling and community service, instead. A lot of revenue is designated help our youth.
Cannabis consumers care about our planet, which will get a boost as commercial gardens have to comply with environmental-protecting regulations, and revenues help restore streams and the land that have been damaged by some unscrupulous, illegal growers on our public lands.
AUMA’s provisions on hemp makes it easier to start a new ecologically sustainable industry capable of producing thousands of products (from food and cosmetics to textiles, plastic and paper) and jobs.
I am excited that those who grow, process and sell cannabis will also get an opportunity to come out of the shadows, get licensed and make an honest living without fear of raids or arrests. I am still grateful for those who have taken the risks during the prohibition era, and I pray that they will survive and thrive in the legal marketplace.
AUMA will be the beginning of a new era. It is written to be flexible and improved upon, while protecting patients and Prop. 215. It will help patients who live in cities and counties that have cultivation bans, as AUMA protects discreet, indoor or greenhouse gardens of up to six plants from local bans and patients with kids from CPS interference.
It will take vigilance to assure that the initiative proceeds according to its intents and purposes, and it will require cannabis consumers to continue to stand up and work to end residual discriminatory practices. Nonetheless, I am confident that we will get there, as I have much trust in this plant, which has so much good to offer the world.
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