Ben Harris - Something's got to give

Reader Ben Harris is fired up by the ridiculous decision in Raich. If I knew how to do CSS pages, I'd give it its own page, but since I still don't know how to do that (and what I would give for a computer geek willing to spend a couple of hours to teach me how), I'm going to excerpt a couple of paragraphs.

It seems to me that there are far to few people fighting the "War" on the side of drugs and harm reduction. We need more people to stand up and say "I smoke pot, and I hold a fulltime job, and I contribute to society." The government can (for now at least) only do what the people want them to do. I know it is not that simple, but in a way it is. If the public took it upon themselves to become informed about what the government is REALLY doing, they might not be so willing to be led around like sheep.

And he puts his money where his mouth is:

Everyone around me personally knows what I do. I'm not going to walk up to a cop and say, "Arrest me, I use marijuana." However, just about everyone at work knows what I do, or at least suspect. I would never lie about my use, because lies just get you in more trouble. But those people who know what I do also know that I have been out of work a total of one full day in 22 months. The guy who's job I do now had a drinking problem. That's why I have the job, because after 5 years our company had to let him go because the alcohol just became too much of a problem. And then they hired a pot head. Go figure.

He's right that we need more regular folks to stand up and admit they are cannabis consumers. We have a lot of reform NGOs out there but what's missing is the grass roots masses that are otherwise law abiding citizens, often important and well respected members of their community, to come forward instead of leaving it to the NGOs and activists to do all the work. I leave you with Ben's closing words.

We need to start a movement. Something needs to change, and maybe now is the time.

No maybe about it. There's no time like the present.