ON YOUR MARK, GET SET, GROW
Get those seeds in the ground right away, Mass
BY ANDY GAUS
Ed. Note: This column was made possible by Mass Secretary of State William Galvin, who finally announced that he will do his freaking job and submit official results of the Question 4 ballot initiative for certification before Dec 15, the day that voters pulled for cannabis prohibition to end in the Commonwealth.
Hey, all you law-abiding stoners out there: As of Thursday, you can legally light up some weed. Only problem: Unless you have a medical marijuana card, you can’t buy any.
As a law-abiding stoner, you wouldn’t want to buy pot from an unlicensed dealer. And no, you can’t legally bring a few lids back from Colorado. So, what can you do? You can grow your own.
As for the Trump administration emerging from the muck like the Swamp Thing…
The president-elect’s pick for attorney general, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, told a Senate hearing last April that “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” This and other prohibitionist outbursts have been noted with glee by media haters of late. But whether Trump will give his AG free rein to enforce federal laws against all the bad people is not known. It wouldn’t be an easy task.
Twenty-eight states now allow at least medical marijuana — more rebel states than in the Civil War. Sessions could send letters to those places demanding that they revoke all licenses to sell marijuana. Alternatively, since Trump has voiced support for medical marijuana, Sessions might move only against the eight states with recreational programs (like ours, as of this week). Or he might leave it to local federal attorneys to prosecute a few of the larger sellers so as to intimidate the rest.
One way or another, the feds under Trump could make it impossible or impractical for pot stores to open in Mass in 2018, as they are supposed to according to the new law. Homegrown might be the only legal weed for healthy people and the only legal source that a Trump administration can’t choke off. Which makes it even more vital to keep the state legislature from amending Question 4 to ban home cultivation.
On the technical side of making this all work, as longtime activist Terry Franklin has suggested, growers may need to reconsider the practice of killing all the male plants to produce more powerful females. We need an abundance of seeds to share, he says, in order to grow as a community. I’m inspired, and I’m starting the #MalePlantsMatter movement. Look for our protests soon.
But who really knows what Trump will do? Judging from his recent actions, I am inclined to believe that he will allow the opening of stores — provided that they’re lodged in Trump real-estate assets and they exclusively sell Trump marijuana.
Andy Gaus is a Massachusetts-based cannabis advocate and a member of MassCann-NORML.
