It’s April, which means that, on the 20th (4/20), stoners will celebrate being stoners, pot stores will have sales and cannabis will get its very own St. Paddy’s Day. And, as a daily (hourly) cannabis user, I feel authorized to make the following statement: the idea of a pot holiday in modern times (or, at least seeing said holiday as edgy or hip) is kind of cringe. Here are a few reasons why.
If your mom is able to smoke weed that she purchased in a strip mall with a debit card, it’s no longer rebellious to smoke it. Fun, yes. Oppositional? No. The pot leaf—a once-forbidden symbol of rebellion and anti-establishment sentiment—went from being blurred out of Snoop Dogg videos to being sold on posters at the toy store. It’s even a fucking emoji that comes bundled in any app your ten-year old kid asked you to install. And, yes, it was hella dumb to ban a leaf, but it’s equally stupid to be like, "LOOK AT THIS BAD ASS LEAF AND FEAR MY DISRESPECT FOR AUTHORITY."
Unless they live in Utah, anyone with a pot leaf tattoo may as well have a beer bottle inked on them. Again, I’m a stoner. I’m smoking Elephant Ears Kush right now (this shit is fire, by the way). But, the only thing that my weed habit is currently jeopardizing is the ability to get this article in on time. So, the bad-assery points are as useful as an expired Dutch Bros stamp card right now.
Which would you rather have: one day a year in which to celebrate getting high for getting high’s sake, or a couple dozen days of the year in which people are just as encouraged to get baked as they are encouraged to get drunk? Think about it—if alcohol had its own holiday, would it be socially acceptable to get shitfaced on Easter? I don’t think so. Rather, we have absorbed alcohol into the casual traditions of other holidays, leading to things like egg nog and the 1:30pm D.U.I.I. So, why not incorporate weed into every holiday, just like booze? For Halloween, kids would get full-sized candy bars. Super Bowl halftime shows would be enjoyable again. Fireworks displays would start a few hours late, lasting well into the night. And, at Thanksgiving, your aunt’s cranberry casserole wouldn’t get cold. I can’t think of a single holiday that wouldn’t be more awesome, if everyone was just expected to get stoned.
Like anything produced by brown people with soul, only to be appropriated by college-aged whites in the Northwest, cannabis culture has been all but abandoned, in exchange for the commercialization of "pot culture." And, just like tobacco, cannabis will soon only be used for its lowest-common-denominator factor (as in, you don’t see a lot of American Spirit smokers consulting with their ancestors during their tobacco meditations). Supposedly, THC and CBD can do everything from cure cancer to make The Grateful Dead sound good, but let’s just forget about that and focus on 42% off e-cartridge sales (if you download the app) at a "pot store," that looks more like an Apple store than the actual Apple store.
All I am saying here is that pot has become as commercialized and watered-down as rap music and left-wing activism. And, this is to be expected in a culture that prioritizes getting "fucked up, man" over honoring any of the actual culture associated with Get Fucked Up Day. For instance, St. Paddy’s Day, which is basically the alcoholic’s 4/20, has fuck-all to do with Irish culture and...well, let me back up—it has everything to do with actual Irish culture (alcohol, violence and casual racism), but fuck-all to do with the cleansing of snakes from a Catholic homeland, thanks to some dude with a magical flute. St. Paddy is no Santa Claus, at least when it comes to popular lore.
In previous columns, I’ve drawn attention to the disgusting, not-the-good-kind of irony associated with free weekly papers promoting the latest locally owned, cannabis-infused, food-cart- slash-karaoke-bus that appeals to pasty hipsters, while at the same time, reserving zero editorial space to address the issue of folks still sitting in jail for getting caught with a gram at a Floater concert back in the day. That, or completely forgetting to bring up the story of how cannabis made it to Oregon, much of which is littered with racist, anti-immigrant, pro-oil-and-paper- industry history. But hey, if The Willamette Mercury’s top picks for BIPOC- owned dispensaries include at least one "Latinx" mention, no harm, no foul, right? Seriously, fuck your vegan, cannabis-infused, ice cream substitute and the Prius it was delivered in. Until every single cannabis criminal is freed, the word "progressive" should be reserved for insurance quotes. While we’re at it, same goes for full-page features on the best tiny homes to buy for summer, while the rise in Portland’s houseless population continues to dwarf that of the stock market and Bitcoin combined. In fact, now that I think of it, Portland isn’t progressive at all and this weed is really fucking with my head...damn sativas. I better stop typing now, before I point out overwhelmingly Aryan racial demographics in local "anti-fascist" circles or correlation between murdered black teenagers and the lack of taxpayer-funded first responders. Ahh, Portland...so quirky and weird, am I right?
I know I’m being Captain Buzzkill here, but I’m just a lowly smoker who remembers catching a felony for an ounce of pot in the parking lot of a former strip club that has since been turned into an upscale dispensary. So, yeah, it’s bitter old man shit to rant about everything wrong with you kids being on my grow lawn, but the last time I checked, Portland is "tear down the elk statue to get back at centuries-old crimes by our ancestors" woke. If that’s the case, then you can’t just slap a "colonization is bad" bumper sticker on a zero-emissions vehicle, while opening an upscale "cannabis gallery" in the former location of a black church, that was forced into debt after the third family from Sonoma moved into the neighborhood, complete with "In This House We Believe In Smug Liberal Platitudes" signs, gender-neutral rescue animals and a lawn jockey statue with a "Black Lives Matter" shirt stenciled onto it. It doesn’t fucking work like that. A city’s level of "progress" isn’t measured exclusively by the number of bike lanes, woke murals and gay mayors. If Portland is going to offer drone-dropped dabs sponsored by trendy tech start-ups, we need to make sure that a person caught selling a joint within a thousand feet of an unattended school faces no more jail time than, well, a corporation selling $20 grams, a thousand and one feet from that same school.
Happy 4/20. I plan on getting outside because, well, you just got done reading this shit. I need to chill out. See you all at the lake...where it’s still illegal to smoke weed.
