Martha Washington Was a Hip, Hip Lady

The Willamette Weekly recently published a story about Paul Stanford, a red cheeked, plump, boy-faced 40-year-old who has been fighting to keep medical-marijuana laws relatively libertarian in Oregon. Now before taking a moment to hastily praise Mr. Stanford for his contribution to an community of common sense and adult standards, you may want to read the entire article. Paul Stanford has been fighting to make marijuana legal all over the United States, but he may also be a bumbling idiot, or even a crook, maybe both. In any case, he has mismanaged his campaign and been careless with thousands of dollars worth of funds. Too bad for Paul Stanford.

The I.R.S. is definitely on Stanford’s ass. Illegal drugs, black markets, shady politics and crooked spies have always been a treasured part of Americana. We’re a nothing but the spawn of unstable wanderers, religious zealots, criminal runaways, and massacring bastards. We are dreamers, although misguided, scattered among the great expanse of a nation still splintered and haunted by the dimming cry of a people born when the mind expressed pure, physical emotion, amplified by indescribable sound and color. We do not put up with losers.

This is American, damn it! And more so, this is Portland. You can run a house of Thai teenage prostitutes who sew Nike soccer-balls during the day, but you cannot prevail with such an establishment without a clean, business oriented tax record. There are clubs where up-to-but-no-more-than 14 wet, drunk, sweaty, naked semi-strangers can participate in group sex or simple, wallflower masturbation. And if Paul Stanford had kept better track of his goddamn, illegal drug money then, as readers, we could have all taken a moment and thanked the Lord, in all his infinite mercy, for sending someone like Mr. Stanford into the waking world to crusade for a plant that grows from the holy ground. We, however tragic, cannot send out this simple prayer.

The laws governing the sale of marijuana have been destructively skewed for decades. Too bad for us. Too bad for the common man and woman. If you work shuffling papers and answering phones for a company that makes water-proof, industrial plumbing covers, then perhaps at the end of your 40-hour work week, plus 6-hour weekly traffic-fuck, you’d like to come home, smoke a giant bong of cancer-patient-strength pot, and giggle while playing video games. Or maybe you’ve cleaned the kitchen, bathrooms, and bedrooms, cooked dinner and finished laundry, then perhaps you’d like to puff a joint to make your skin more eager to touch before crawling in bed with a hairy, over-weight water-proof, industrial plumbing cover customer service agent. Maybe you do have cancer, and grass helps you eat and your nausea vanish. Maybe your job is nothing but hard, manual labor and weed makes you relax after a long day better than a six-pack of Coors Light. Maybe you have bad joints and smoking a bowl helps ease the tension. And maybe you’re a spoiled, over-privileged trust-fund baby, and you smoke pot because, fuck it, it gets you high. These are all equal.

If you’re an adult, you get to decide what makes you feel better at the end of the day, provided it doesn’t directly harm another individual. If it’s something as simple as a plant that only requires a small flame to use, then it’s an acceptable choice. Every action has a reaction, every wave a counter-balancing ripple, and every thought and movement made is carefully tagged with the phrase, “Use At Your Own Discretion.”