So the bill is probably DOA in the Senate for now, but the times they are a-changing. I first smoked marijuana in the 1960s. I remember going to a liquor store and buying Zig Zag rolling papers, and the owner didn't want to sell them unless I purchased tobacco. Most everything was Mexican dirt weed back then: seeds and stems and flower compressed into bricks. Kilos sold for 80-100 dollars, and an ounce (we called it a lid) sold for $10. I'm sure the potency would be laughed at today, but at those prices you could be someone profligate in smoke delivery. There were pipes with aquarium pumps that would fill a bathroom full of smoke. You and your friends could have a Cannabis sauna.The House on Friday passed sweeping legislation that would decriminalize marijuana and expunge nonviolent marijuana-related convictions, as Democrats sought to roll back and compensate for decades of drug policies that have disproportionately affected low-income communities of color.
The 228-164 vote to approve the measure was bipartisan, and it was the first time either a chamber of Congress had ever endorsed the legalization of cannabis. The bill would remove the drug from the Controlled Substances Act and authorize a 5 percent tax on marijuana that would fund community and small business grant programs to help those most impacted by the criminalization of marijuana.
The legislation is, for now, almost certainly doomed in the Republican-led Senate, where that party’s leaders have derided it as a superficial distraction from the work of passing coronavirus relief, as lawmakers inched toward bipartisan compromise after spending months locked in an impasse.
But the bill’s passage in the House amounted to a watershed moment decades in the making for advocates of marijuana legislation, and it laid out an expansive federal framework for redressing the racial disparities in the criminal justice system exacerbated by the war on drugs.
Like prohibition, smoking dope conferred an anti-establishment rebel status upon you. Sharing a joint was not only social, it was a statement of solidarity.
So it's been very weird to see the walls against social acceptance come crumbling down in the last few years. I remember the first time I went to a legal pot shop. Take my hand, I'm a stranger in paradise. I imagined the experience like growing up in Normal, Illinois and going to a San Francisco gay bar for the first time. If hunger is the best sauce, illegality is a spice.
As a practical matter in California, the House legislation has more to do with financial regulation and interstate commerce. But along with women's rights, gay rights and minority rights, there has been remarkable change since the 1960s.
If you want to know the truth of Marihuana, check out this film, made around the time of my birth.
