Regulation, Legalization, Cannabis Cultivation and Personal Responsibility

E had a status seizure. Rescue meds had to be given, which put E in respiratory distress. E is unresponsive. Yes, we could go to the ER and be intubated, but he has less than a 10% chance of recovering extubation. So instead, the pulmonologist increased the air pressure to hopefully keep E's airway open. Now, I sit, cry, pray, and watch E's heart rate and breath...praying with everything in me...that it doesn't stop. This could have possibly been prevented. Have you ever seen what cannabis can do when rubbed onto the bottom of someone's foot while they are having a seizure?? It's almost an instant result. But you know what. E's life and millions [of] others suffering with epilepsy, their lives don't matter to our government. They could give 2 shits less if this VALIUM kills my child because we have no legal access to a natural medicine that could possibly put a lot of pharmaceutical companies out of business.

The foregoing is an excerpt from a post on my Facebook feed recently. Now I am asking myself, what do I say to my friends and neighbors who are engaged in a practice I think is evil. Everyone always imagines that they would not have participated in rounding up the Jews in Europe or in creating the terror famine in Russia. But they forget, there were many incremental steps prior to people being murdered. Guns and businesses were confiscated. People were forced to wear the Star of David. Lists of names were made. Sometimes identification numbers were tattooed onto people's arms. The process of destruction that culminated in death was incremental.

These incremental steps were the jobs descriptions of government employees and administrators. The government employees were simply fulfilling the job requirements. I comfort myself with saying I am not employed at such a job. But I have friends and neighbors who are employed at these jobs. What is my responsibility?

What do I say to my friends and family when they are:

  • the government worker who denies a rehab permit to the purchaser of a dilapidated drug house in a run-down neighborhood?  
  • the city inspector who demands admission to the home of someone who rented a room to an out of town visitor? 
  • the state regulator who gets the search warrant to look for pesticides in the local grow shop where marijuana has been legalized? What do I say when the shop owner throws them out and they seek the support of the police to gain entry? 

These are real questions I ask myself. What is my responsibility to take right action in this instance?

  • I know the people in the permitting department in the city and I know how much time and money it cost the person who was denied a permit to fix up an abandoned house for his son to live in.
  • I know the person who repeatedly called and wrote the homeowner with out of town visitors and I know the homeowner. The city inspector even showed up at the guy's house and demanded admission. 
  • I know the regulator who is getting the warrant to search the hydroponic/grow shop and involving the police. The cannabis might be legal, but they may find other regulatory violations which could close the shop or result in heavy fines and then my Georgia Facebook friend might lose access to the cannabis which is keeping her son alive.

None of these people see the connection between dilapidated neighborhoods and the impediments and costs they create just by doing their jobs. They don't see that their work is merely the work of creating impediments. They don't solve problems. They create problems. That is the nature of the work they are paid to do. They don't see the high cost of medical marijuana and the children suffering and even dying from seizures because cannabis is so hard and expensive to come by.  When they give the list of names of grow shops to the police so they can "regulate them, they don't see the nature of their act.  

And me? What am I? I am a person who sees people I know doing something that I think is destructive and maybe even evil and not saying anything about it because the people acting are friends and some are even family. What does that make me?


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