Time Is Relative If You Are Doing Time for Pot

by Zvi Baranoff

One of the difficulties of writing about marijuana these days is that the ground is rapidly shifting under our feet. What may have seemed impossible a short time ago is actual now and what may seem unlikely now will be quite possible before the ink is dry or the electronic blips make the rounds of social media cyberspace.

I am reluctant to speak of inevitability concerning pretty much anything besides gravity and inertia, but I think that it is safe to say that marijuana will be legal in most of the world before long. Of course, one's sense of time is relative and relative freedom is often determined by zip codes or other arbitrary borders.

I was in High School in a working class New Jersey suburb in the 1970s. Jimmy Carter was President and I was told that marijuana will be legal really soon. The local cops seemed to take pleasure in pulling our cars over and turning our pockets inside out.

As a young adult I was busted several times for simply possessing small amounts of cannabis or a pipe or roach clip and once for growing two plants in my backyard. Yet, even with the harassment and busts, it seemed inevitable that prohibition would end soon.

The Berlin Wall fell and they celebrated there with rock & roll, smoking pot out in the open for all the world to see. I was busted that very same day for a small bag of weed.

By the 1990s there was already a widespread recognition of the efficacy of cannabis and broad public support for patient access to this most beneficial herbal medicine. I was arrested in Key West, Florida for supplying AIDS patients with cannabis.

A decade later I was arrested and charged with marijuana trafficking. A charge of possession with intent to distribute landed me in a Federal Prison Camp where I sat while state after state liberalized their cannabis laws, several more recognized medical marijuana and Washington State and Colorado legalized recreational. It can't be much longer, pot prisoners told each other as we each sat out our full sentence.

I served out my sentence and years of Probation as well. We moved to Oregon where I registered to vote and cast my first ballot in nearly a decade, voting to legalize marijuana. There are folks still sitting in jails and prisons for weed. Some are serving Life Without Parole.

We now recognize medical marijuana in most of the USA and we just lifted the ban on hemp growing as well as interstate trade in hemp. Canibinoids derived from hemp are now legal nationally. At last count, ten states have legalized marijuana for adult use and there may be another half dozen by the end of 2019 or even by the time you read this.

I am pretty sure that the inevitability of legal cannabis is really not that far away. I am sure that the people sitting in prisons are still saying that to each other. Perhaps, before long, they will get to go home. Perhaps, some day soon, we will have a discussion concerning reparative justice.