Facebook Commandos

For those of you who use Face­book, I have pity on you.  It’s not a friend­ly place.  Today, peo­ple call­ing them­selves advo­cates for full legal­iza­tion of mar­i­jua­na in Iowa are com­plain­ing about two groups we have here in Iowa and the com­plaints are sim­i­lar toward both groups.

1. You have a group called Iowans 4 Med­ical Cannabis advo­cat­ing for med­ical use, say­ing that it won’t lead to legal­iza­tion of non-med­ical use.
    
2. You have a group called Iowa Hemp Asso­ci­a­tion advo­cat­ing for indus­tri­al use, say­ing it won’t lead to legal­iza­tion for non-indus­tri­al use.

This makes these so-called advo­cates angry, because they see med­ical use and indus­tri­al use as sub­sets of a greater whole (full legal­iza­tion).  Full legal­iza­tion would give the patients their med­i­cine and save the trees at the same time.  I won’t go into what full legal­iza­tion looks like, because I don’t real­ly know what it looks like.  Alco­hol is not ful­ly legal­ized.  Tobac­co is not ful­ly legal­ized.  Alco­hol and tobac­co are both tox­ic and mar­i­jua­na is not, so I can’t see them as being the same.  Even cocaine and mor­phine are legal under cer­tain restric­tions.  Even metham­phet­a­mine is legal under cer­tain restric­tions.  So, I think we need to come up with some­thing unique for mar­i­jua­na, since mar­i­jua­na is safer than all of these things we already accept under cer­tain restric­tions.

What dri­ves med­ical advo­cates is that they are being tor­tured by the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try.  Med­ical users are being forced to use tox­ic chem­i­cals instead of a safe plant.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t take what a per­son being tor­tured says as seri­ous­ly as I take what a per­son says who has time and the abil­i­ty to think clear­ly.  These patients are being tor­tured, plain and sim­ple.  I’m not going to attack them for try­ing to save their lives and the lives of their loved ones.  Things are not okay in this coun­try, and this is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of it.  Give the patients a break.  They need our help, not a bunch of cheap talk.

What dri­ves indus­tri­al advo­cates is entre­pre­neur­ship.  This is a fun­da­men­tal val­ue in our soci­ety, mak­ing mon­ey.  We can’t expect cap­i­tal­ism to go away.  And, besides, hemp is a good prod­uct.  You can make lots of good stuff from it.  I could com­plain about cap­i­tal­ism, but it’s not going away.  The mar­ket dri­ves cap­i­tal­ism, so if you’re offend­ed, then don’t buy what’s being sold, plain and sim­ple.

So, what I see miss­ing is that the peo­ple com­plain­ing on Face­book and claim­ing they have the high­er (par­don the pun) ground are show­ing up at events they did not orga­nize and com­plain­ing about the peo­ple who did orga­nize them.  What a colos­sal waste of time.  Talk is cheap.  Instead of doing some­thing pro­duc­tive, they talk trash about oth­ers.  It’s pathet­ic.  This proves they are not rep­re­sent­ing any high­er issue at all.  They rep­re­sent small­ness, plain and sim­ple.  I like to call them Face­book Com­man­dos, or arm­chair quar­ter­backs if you want to go with an old­er col­lo­qui­al­ism.

I don’t know how any­one can say that med­ical use or indus­tri­al use will not lead to full legal­iza­tion, since we are see­ing full legal­iza­tion now as a direct result of the many use­ful things mar­i­jua­na can do.  But, if peo­ple want to say the many uses of this plant will not lead to fur­ther legal­iza­tion, let’s not waste our time attack­ing them for it.

If these whin­ers on Face­book would go find some­thing pro­duc­tive to do, instead of com­plain­ing about peo­ple doing good things, we’d all be a lot bet­ter off for it.

I don’t know about you, but when some­one starts pro­mot­ing the ben­e­fits of mar­i­jua­na, I want to thank them for it.  Attack­ing them on Face­book is not some­thing I can thank any­one for.