ALBANY — New York, we’re told, has embarked on a grand plan to promote recreational marijuana, a supposed shift from the old “just say no” policy toward a brighter, gentler future. But, is this really the truth?
I do not think so. In fact, I’ve subscribed to a conspiracy theory: that state officials are trying to destroy marijuana by making it so boring, so boring, so bureaucratic that nobody wants to go near the stuff. It’s a sneaky but brilliant plan that I believe was hatched by a former governor who was the king of sneaky plans. And it might just work.
Before I explain, I want to say that I’m a pot agnostic. I’ve never really looked into it and rarely used it, but I was still appalled by the absurd overreactions to marijuana by, well, mostly politicians. prison sentence for plant possession? For real?
I went to college in Texas, a state notorious for its draconian marijuana penalties, a state where a gubernatorial candidate once vowed to introduce pot smokers to boot camps and “the joys of rock blasting.” It was all so absurdly stupid that it had made a relatively mundane drug more appealing than it should have been.
The more politicians promised to “win this war,” the cooler, even more dangerous, marijuana seemed. Their stupidity gave marijuana an inappropriate meaning. We are not stoners! We are freedom fighters! Dissidents against the totalitarian regime!
Spite has long been a part of pot’s appeal in my opinion. The stoned hippies of Woodstock didn’t just get high. They glued it to the man. They fingered the 1950s, J. Edgar Hoover, and of course their parents. They laughed at the “Reefer Madness” squares, which viewed marijuana as the “burning weed with its roots in Hell,” as that classic piece of propaganda put it.
Unfortunately, the squares continued their struggle for a very long time. Consider what Andrew Cuomo said in 2017 when asked by former Times Union reporter Jimmy Vielkind (now at the Wall Street Journal) why he was such a hobbyist when it came to recreational marijuana.
“I don’t support recreational marijuana — apparently you do, which explains some of the stories you’ve written,” the former governor said, adding, “The counter argument is, as you know, it’s a gateway drug and Marijuana leads to other drugs and there is a lot of evidence that this is true.”
Just four years later, Cuomo signed legislation legalizing recreational marijuana into law, declaring it “a historic day in New York, one that righted the wrongs of the past.” Did he really have a change of heart? Has the Democrat been seduced by the possibility of the marijuana tax revenue? Or was his signature about something else?
I’ve come to the conclusion that it was something else. I am convinced that his signature launched a Machiavellian scheme designed to smoke the allure of marijuana. Skeptical?
Well, consider that New York’s marijuana has been taken over by the bleakest of bleak bureaucracies, a booming, earnest, ever-growing bureaucracy that runs the Office of Cannabis Management along with the Cannabis Control Board and issues boring reports laden with official ambiguity. The Board and Office are creating a regulated framework for adult use cannabis that promotes a regulated market…
Zzzzzzz
Meanwhile, “the board and the bureau” conduct an endless introduction to recreational marijuana that’s Soviet in efficiency and less fun than a Politburo meeting. That these gray, smug bureaucracies should promote a product that makes users giggle is one of the greatest ironies of all time.
Why would anyone want what they’re selling? Why does this have to be so complicated? If you can go to the grocery store to buy beer and cigarettes, products that are also dangerous enough to warrant state regulation, then why does a person need to go to an official New York State Licensed Cannabis Dispensary to smoke weed to buy?
None of this makes much sense, leading me to believe it can only be part of the plan, friends — a plan to make marijuana as uncool as denture cream, a plan to protect the kids, the hipsters, the aging hippies and all sending others running towards lemonade and apple pie. After 100 years of fruitless prohibition, the squares must have finally figured out that the only way to curb pot use is to embrace it.
So they smothered it with press releases. They poured it into regulations. They beat it to death with a government seal of approval. When this never-ending rollout is finally complete, marijuana will be as boring as a booth on the Harriman State Office campus and as alluring as a bloated tick. The attraction of the drug will have died a slow death.
Touché, Mr. Cuomo. Beat.
[email protected] ■ 518-454-5442 ■ @chris_churchill
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