Dude, Scotty, Guru, and Team,
Love the show. It makes a long commute informational, and hilarious. Please keep up the good work.
The Water Boy first began growing in the late 70’s. I haven’t grown every single year, but most. All sun grown.
Sadly, I am living in the geographic epicenter of Prohibition Land. Circumstances dictate that I stay in
this area, or I would be there in Colorado hanging with y’all. On a positive note, I’m retiring now and moving onto my 30-acre property in a neighboring state. Wish I could find some authentic Durban landrace seeds!
My comment relates to how we can improve the debate and dialogue here in PL, and eventually give us some hope that Rec. will possibly be legal here within my lifetime. While the momentum is beginning to swing our way a bit, this will still be a hard hill to climb. Anyone with a voice, radio, TV, podcast, or other outreach can help.
One thing that has an important impact is the communication piece. The more we get the friendly (and medicinal) attributes of cannabis into the discussion, the more comfortable voters will eventually be. Today, there are still too many people that are far too closed, but an ongoing friendly dialogue will eventually lead to
greater comfort and tolerance. But the way messages are delivered, the content of those message, and even the vernacular do matter.
The discussion has to be rational and ongoing; almost as if it were a background. And let me say that I
love what breeders have done in the U.S. since the 70’s; it has provided an almost unlimited spectrum of
strains, regardless of what you are looking for. But using strain names like “Scrambled Lobotomy”,
“Crack Addiction”, or “Candy Yum-Yums” isn’t helping matters (all made-up but you know what I mean).
There are around 170,000 words (in the English language alone) so I’m sure better names are out there.
Also, to eat this elephant one bite at a time, we try to avoid mentioning Psilocybin, DMT, and Ayahuasca
in the context of otherwise beneficial discussions of cannabis. We try to focus on the cannabis. Oh…, and the
term cannabis itself is more palatable in PL that “Weed”, “Pot”, or “Marijuana”. Go figure, but true.
Believe me, I see this every day. Words are powerful.
Thanks again for what you do and keep up the great work! I’m always
happy about how may people I run into every week that listen.
Cheers!
The Water Boy
First, join NORML. It’s your best legislative lobby connection. While you are correct that words matter, you can’t just negate the nomenclature that is part of the culture. I try and not call my pot marijuana because of it’s historical implications. When speaking to mixed groups, I always call it Cannabis. At home, it’s pot, smoke, weed… whatever.
Denying that it’s not only medicinal, but enjoyable is disingenuous. Embrace the culture while still talking intelligently is the best source of real information you can provide. It’s pretty hard to embrace fallacies like pot makes you stupid, when you just lost a debate with a high-on who used big words and statistics to defeat your arguments, and then also admits they were high when they did it. I’ve spread feminism to non-believers in much the same manner. One ignorant person at a time.
I agree with everything you said except for the wile thing about calling cannabis marijuana. I prefer the term cannabis because marijuana is too close to “pot” and “dope.” Terms I find derogatory to the plant and which carry connotations that it’s similar to hard drugs. Where I disagree vehemently is with the notion that the word “marijuana” is somehow racist. Respectfully, that’s utter nonsense, imo. I can tell you that even dragging this discussion into the context of discussing legalization will only turn off people that we need to side with us. I live in an extremely conservative, very rural part of extreme Prohibitionland and I’m pretty ‘conservative’ in my views on most things and I can tell you the people that are needed to decriminalize cannabis (I oppose federal legalization because it allows big ag and pharma into our space) are SICK & TIRED of everything being twisted around to for a pretzel shape people can call “racist.” I live in a predominantly Mexican-origin community and spend quite a bit of time in Mexico and MOST Mexicans on both sides of the border call cannabis, “marijuana” and look at you weird if you mention “cannabis.” The word is NOT racist or derogatory. What did involve quite a bit of racism is Anslinger’s war against our plant. NO disagreement there, at all. However, the leap from his policies of 80 years ago to the use of a broadly accepted term for the plant is one GIGANTIC leap. This controversy is a solution looking for a problem that was created by nut-jobs that are so weak-minded that they need to virtue signal and prove to themselves that they’re not “racist.” This is just a part of the crazy competitive virtue signaling craze. Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinions but if your goal is to decriminalize cannabis in your state or nationally, you need to chill pulling on the weakest thread and use the most compelling arguments to convince people in the middle and right of center. I can tell you from personal experience, there are a lot more conservatives on board with personal, adult use of cannabis than you realize. But, when they hear this kinda BS about the word being “racist” they often shy away because jumping on the train makes them feel like they’re joining a train filled with crazy people. If you don’t like the word, don’t use it; but no you needs to be telling other people what words are acceptable and what isn’t. You gotta pick your battle. Would you rather die fighting the use of the word or just not use it and get federal decriminalization?
get rid of those older people in office too.
I’ve found that by giving examples of children who are undoubtedly helped by this plant, you are able to get past the firewall with cannabis deniers.
Kids are always the pawn, prohibitionists always scream BUT WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS! So, we give them examples. Series like the 3 part Sanjay Gupta special Weed really helped break down barriers in the minds of people with poor excuses for hating on it.
Amsterdam has been smoking for a long long time, yet they have no medical program or even much knowledge about that aspect of the plant. At least that is what I gathered form my travels and conversations earlier this year. It kind of blew my mind. Medicinal pot was the Trojan horse for recreational pot in many places.
I think there needs to be a clear and demonstrated medicinal value for it to gain wider acceptance. We are fairly sheltered here in the states though when it comes to useful research. Countries like Israel, Spain and a few others have been conducting meaningful human research for quite sometime now, look to them.
Good luck on your move, I hope you find somewhere on that 30 acres for a few little love plants 🙂
It’s a rare day when I disagree with you Chad but I do on this one. While I get your point, I think it’s mistaken – the fact that cannabis can beneficial to kids does NOT offset the concern about kids using cannabis in a non-medical way. I still don’t get all these names that get used for strains that sound more like treats for kids than serious names. Personally, I know breeders don’t market these strains to kids but after watching what happened in the vape industry with these kinds of names and kids’ usage, it BOGGLES my mind that our community didn’t learn a lesson, pump the brakes and change directions! I’m looking at it strictly from a marketing standpoint… WE are trying to market decriminalization to those in the middle and right of center. When you try to sell somebody something you don’t try to convince them to try something they think tastes nasty by just telling them how wrong they are. You get their business by giving them something that sounds good to them. It might be a little different if ‘strawberry cake’ tasted ANYTHING like strawberry cake; but it doesn’t and we all know it. Since, these names really aren’t accurately descriptive anyway, why would we continue using and creating them when we KNOW already that it’s a problem for the very people we’re trying to convince to think our way? It’s like the worst sales job in history and we tend to blame the friggin consumer!! Lol! It’s ridiculous. Using names of candies like “Runtz” has NO point. It’s not like you couldn’t refer to these flavors in a strain description of the terpene ‘notes’ it has without using inaccurate descriptors in the actual name: accompanied by cartoonish silly images that DO look like candy boxes or kids artwork. We’re advocating for responsible, mostly adult, use and there shouldn’t be a problem using adult names and logos. If that’s all it takes to get to our goal, is this really the subject where you want to dig in your heals? I’d rather give up the silly shit and deal with some grown-up naming and packaging and get federal decriminalization TOMORROW, than stubbornly defend the naming and packaging and wait another 10+ years to finally convince enough adults. JMO.
Discussion is a lost art in this country. We only know how to argue and dig in our heals these days. “My way or the highway, no compromise!” is the moto of the day. I believe that cannabis decriminalization, whether federal or on a state-by-state basis, is ripe for passage already – if we can manage not to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory! Given the popularity of the proposition where I live, there no doubt that a vast majority are accepting of the idea. IF that’s the only thing there is to it. The biggest problem is that the issue keeps getting intertwined with EVERY other social debate on the socio-political menu. If we, as a movement, could separate our case from wrapping it up with all these other social issues today we could get it done quickly. This is why we can’t get “comprehensive deals” done legislatively. If one side wanted to actually get something done today, they separate ONE issue at a time and deal with it. We need to take a page from that playbook. When we discuss decriminalization, stay the hell away from controversial stretches of social political argument and FOCUS on the things that we (left, right and center) agree on and some science-based facets that are clear and easy to accept once pointed out. There’s enough there to convince 9-10ths of Americans.
Point out to conservatives that decriminalization and adult-use (with only strict medical for minors) is most consistent with traditional conservative values such as personal responsibility, limited government, less regulations and the free market. There are lots of conservative principles that are more pro-cannabis than anti. Contrary to popular belief, conservatives DO believe in science and data and there’s plenty to show them. If it weren’t for those arguments that I addressed in other posts getting in the way, it’s pretty clear we could get most (if not all) of our goals passed. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more stoner stereotype that people keep showing off than we need, including digging in our heels on issues that shouldn’t even be issues. Look how far we’ve brought more conservative people in the past 20-30 years! When I started growing in Colorado and California ANY form of legal use was a total pipe dream. We’re at the finish line now! They’ve come so far already. How about we help them across the line instead of continuing to struggle and fight and DRAG them across! We get this done and everybody can smoke and there’s NO TELLING what else might just work itself out if we’re ALL irie!