High Crimes and Canada
By Chris Budweed
Your reporter of all things ganja that make you go hmmmm…
About the author: Chris Budweed is a Cancer survivor, activist and writer on Canada’s weedy west coast. Find their articles in the next issue of Cannabis Digest.
We reframe what we rename. Working one article at a time to rewrite the script of cannabis and its role in our future.
Cannabis legalization in 2019 is a two faced government initiative that is very confusing as concluded by those who have lives hanging in the balance of the government discrepancies as they pachinko through our days. The new provided stores only accommodate recreational needs and have no concept of its medicinal properties and they are not allowed to discuss health with patrons. While we are told its ‘legal’ now, we have less rights than ever even as non cannabis using citizens, because the invasive new laws allow peace officers to allude to their suspecting they detect the scent of the plant without any proof needed, giving them rights of search and seizure without warrants. The government reassures its citizens, on one hand, that we were freer than ever, while the other hand pulls the leash even tighter to the population’s throat. They mislead with news and media that makes those who aren’t involved think the problem’s gone away, meanwhile, heavy handed initiatives do all they can to decimate the existing growers, distributors and dispensaries, to the suffering of hundreds of thousands of patients.
I experienced the ignorance at the Cancer center first hand as they were terrified to educate about the only thing that gives someone with my kind of massive radiation burns, any kind of pain break. The consequences of the misleading intentions and the behind-the-scenes manipulation of the medical industry and how cannabis has been ignored utterly as a medical solution during these so called legalization days is the true high crime.
Obfuscation is a word describing what clouds do to the mountains on a rainy night. They also describe the government’s agenda to sully any kind of intelligent data around cannabis and how the human body benefits and in turn, frames everything remotely related to this healing substance in negative, derogatory terms that also distort not only the truth but the reality of what a role cannabis is currently playing in our world. It strives to disconnect us with the incredible potential for healing this plant has to take the human race, stewarded in the right hands.
I am coming out of a year’s cancer battle and have learned so much about the powers of this plant to provide us with healing and hope for thrivance and I can’t help noticing that like the government has been lying to us about things like forestry, resource management and reproduction rights, they are distorting the education available to mislead the population once again.
I can’t help wanting to shed light on the places where this distortion that disrupts people’s lives who need healing from its soothing solution.
In the course of my years, a double major university degree in First Nations Studies and Women’s Studies that I took parallel to one another, taught me a lot about critical analysis of things that aren’t as they seem. I learned about how colonization kneecapped the virtual kinetic computer program that was the potlatch by deeming potlatches illegal. It was the intention of the governers who oversaw the ships that invaded, to remove the competition by disconnecting the people from their social connections. The colonizers who had intentions that eventually revealed itself to be the ‘no good indian’ agenda did that by framing the entire North American continent as Terre Nullius. The empty land. If nobody lives there, its ours to take!
What I see the government doing to cannabis legacy people who have been dedicated to participating in the destiny of life saving cannabis education is more of the same. Its just a bunch of stupid stoners, its ours to take.
Way to negate the patient, the mental health survivor, the marginalized of your country, Canada, and way to insult our intelligence.
In the next series of articles, I will reveal every discrepancy I notice. I invite your conversations around what it feels like for you, as an intelligent human with rights, here in Canada, who know you do better when you have safe, reasonable and dignified access to the products from the cannabis plant, and look forward to when you chime in.
