Artists Collective
Posted on March 25, 2008
It began as a seed. Just an idea. Medical marijuana businesses are required under California law to operate as non-profits. So why not launch a service that lives up to the law’s true spirit? I could provide safe access to truly sick people, and instead of their money going to profiteers I could take those funds and create art grants for writers, painters, musicians, performers and others whose work shows bonafide merit.
Hell, somebody has to do something. If not, our culture is destined to devolve into endless American Idol reruns. And what a perfect storyline for the marijuana movement. Pot dealers making it possible for Republicans to bury the NEA. Not that the National Endowment for the Arts can do much as things stand anyway. This year’s budget is $144 million. Comparable sums are spent every twelve hours in Iraq. Nor is corporate America helping. Suits don’t give a fig about young artists. But in apathy, they’re not alone. As a people, we’ve grown appallingly comfortable with the idea of the starving artist. That creative folk should struggle to do their best work is one thing, but that artists should physically and emotionally suffer, in some cases resort to crime, or have their lives eviscerated in some other sad, heartbreaking way—just because god granted them the grace to play the piano rather than launch an IPO, is a callousness which calls into question the very civility of our society.
A people lacking artistry is a people deserving to be forgotten. But isn’t that where we stand? We’ve become a society where the rich, famous and well-connected are given carte-blanche, while everyone else must drag through the muck in the face of hardship and looming calamity.
And if the prevailing winds continue, with government half-assing it, businesses lacking heart, and the rich and famous grown so fat they only sit and read their press clippings, then who? I say, if that’s how they’re gonna play the game, why not fund the arts by selling marijuana?
Shocking or not, we’ve come to a crossroads, a moment when conventional plans are no longer working. So why not try something revolutionary? Why not harness the financial power of marijuana to privately bankroll social good? Who says drug money must go to criminals? Who says it must go to pharmaceutical corporations? In marijuana, we have a product with the billion dollar potential of cigarettes and alcohol, and as of now, no corporate allegiances. We’re sitting on a vast fortune, and together we have the power to steer much of that money in highly beneficial charitable directions.
It only requires we be pragmatic. Read more
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When the Empire Strikes Back
Posted on March 17, 2008
By Steve Almond
Just how I wound up at the hemp festival is not something I want to get into, at least not without my attorney present. But I do want to make a couple of observations about the general state of the marijuana-smoking community, of which I am a proud (and, if I may add, medically-necessitated) member. But before I get into all that, I’d like to share a few warm memories of my afternoon. Well, let’s see … I did take notes. I must have misplaced them, though. Anyway, here’s (more or less) what I remember: There was a drum circle that included a topless woman with strips of tape over her nipples. I don’t know what these strips of tape said, though I am willing to speculate that they didn’t say Left or Right. There was an energetic band from Waltham whose songs sounded a bit like Cheap Trick, if you can envision the members of Cheap Trick as, perhaps, brain damaged.
The main thing I noticed was that—for all the scratchy hemp sandals and bracelets on sale—there was no actual paraphernalia on sale. Not one single pipe or bong. To be quite honest, I attended the festival, in part, because I wanted to buy myself a cool little bong, because I am tired of self-administering my medically-necessitated marijuana using a hacked up apple. (Or, when I’m out of apples, a jury-rigged Bic pen.) But selling paraphernalia has become more and more dangerous of late. As many of you may be aware, the federal government has launched a heroic campaign to criminalize the sale of instruments used to smoke pot. I am going to leave aside my primary objections because I want emphasize the pointlessness of this particular endeavor. Us stoners may be a bit slow on the uptake, but do you really think that cutting off our supply of blown-glass one-hitters is going to force us to quit smoking up? (And if you do, may I please have some of whatever you’re smoking?)
But I must say that the fact that I couldn’t buy a pipe at the Hemp Festival did underscore one disturbing truth about the larger stoner community: We are not exactly an imposing political force. Indeed, if I had to choose a population least likely to form a coherent lobby, pot smokers would be among my top three, right alongside contented Red Sox fans and mental patients. The problem, as I see it, is that pot smokers are just way too mellow. We are not, by nature, Type A human beings. Or, if we are Type A, pot generally reduces us to Type M people. The last thing we want is to have to go through a whole political hassle over our pot use. (Bummer, man.) Most of the kids at the Hemp Fest, for example, seemed more worked up over how much chicken they got in their burritos than the recent spate of raids on headshops. Read more
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“What cancer taught me about marijuana.”
Posted on February 29, 2008
By Diana Wagman
Ahh, cancer. One learns so much from being diagnosed with a death-sentence disease. Of course, 95 percent of it is stuff you would rather not know, but that other 5 percent is downright interesting. For example, America’s Next Top Model is much more fun to watch when you’ve lost 15 pounds without trying. During chemotherapy, vanilla smells good, but vanilla wafers taste disgusting. And eyelashes really do have a purpose. But the most compelling fact I learned was about my friends. Not just what you would expect: How they cooked for my family and took me to doctors and pretended not to notice how bad I looked and, most important, that I could not – cannot – survive without them. No, what really shocked me was how many of my old, dear, married, parenting, job-holding friends smoke pot. I am not kidding. People I never expected dropped by to deliver joints and buds and private stash. The DEA could have set a security cam over my front door and made some serious dents in the marijuana trade. The poets and musicians were not a surprise, but lawyers? CEOs? Republicans?
OK, I admit it, in college I smoked dope with the rest of them. I mean, everybody was doing it – an excuse I do not allow my children. Plus, I felt my only other option was alcohol, and the sweet drinks I liked were too fattening. But that was a long time ago, and since then I have learned to drink bourbon straight, get high on life and appreciate the advantages of not doing anything you wouldn’t want your kids to do.
I thought all my friends felt the same. Boy, was I wrong. When I surfaced from my chemo haze enough to care about anyone else, I was curious. Why do so many 40- and 50-somethings still get high? I asked my suppliers.
Pain was the No. 1 answer. Not just the psychic angst of being mothers and fathers to teenagers, but real physical pain. We’re all beginning to fall apart, and a couple of tokes really take the edge off the sciatica, rotator cuff injuries, irritable bowel syndrome and migraines. Obviously some of us use drugs to ease the lives of quiet desperation we never thought we would have back when we were getting stoned the first time. Our drug use now is really the same as in college. Then I got high to relax, to gain confidence, to forget I was an overweight, mediocre college student terrified of the future. Now we get stoned to relax, forget our disappointing careers and mask our terror of not just our own future but the future for our kids. Read more
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