On Why I Don't Smoke Weed

Ferguson. There was so much I wanted to say. So much has been said already, and I'm not naive enough to think I could say things any better. I thought of so many scenarios that were fitting to discuss. I kept thinking of all that I wanted to write, but everything came down to two major concepts. So, I decided to write about my lack of shock about how the world works, and...why I don't smoke weed. Stay with me here.

The Interwebs are alive with statements about all kinds of things that have happened in my city, in the country, and in the world, that basically begin like this: I didn't realize these things still happened. I didn't think things like this happened in communities like mine. I am in shock. I thought justice would be served.

I'm not here to argue about what justice looks like. I'm here to argue that if you have lived as long as I have, and I'm not quite 40, and you believe that justice usually prevails, that is your privilege talking right there. Yes I understand that people are white, or male, or straight, or living in an actual house or apartment in a developed country, or employed, or physically abled, or what have you. And yet, as people, we live in a society. If we say that we were unaware of the injustices experienced by others--or even by people who look much like ourselves--because it hasn't happened to us SPECIFICALLY, then I will say that our lack of knowledge is, in fact, willful. If you don't see injustice, it isn't because it isn't there. It's because you never had to bother to see it. It is because you chose to look the other way in the face of it. It is because the people affected by the injustice were unimportant to you. It is because you thought that you would never be impacted by injustice, and you also believed that the only thing that mattered is what impacted you directly. If you believe that injustice requires your acceptance to be real, you have proved the point of everyone who sees justice as a goal and a dream, not a birthright or a present-day reality. If you don't see or recognize your own privilege, that is because it isn't necessary for you to see it to benefit from it.

Again, there are so many ways to explain what I mean, but I am going to choose just one--and it is one that will make me exceedingly unpopular, including, or maybe even especially, among my liberal white friends.

Here goes nothing--a decades-long explanation of why I don't smoke weed, condensed into a few paragraphs.

When I was six years old, I was diagnosed with epilepsy. I had more than 100 seizures a day and was forced to take poisonous medication that permanently enlarged my liver. As everyone here knows, I've been diagnosed with cancer twice and have done 10 months of chemotherapy. Both epilepsy and breast cancer kill 50,000 or more people in this country every year. I've dodged these bullets so far, but I don't believe there is any reason (such as my "deserving" nature) that one of these scourges would not do me in eventually. But to the point, I have taken medication all of my life because I had to, and I saw what it did to my body. It never appealed to me to do drugs. I figured it would kill me before I could ever enjoy it. So--reason #1. I get that you can argue with me about the logic of my reasoning here, or about how weed would help me rather than hurt me, but when you do that, you are ignoring what I just said to you. You are ignoring my reason, my reality, my personal and probably illogical and arbitrary association with the harshness of drugs and the price I've paid for (knock on wood) good health. You may be right, but I am not wrong. You just never had to live as me.

So, it never appealed to me. Another reason for that is this (and yes, I know this is changing, because I live in society too, and I pay attention): weed is illegal. OK, enter all the arguments about why it shouldn't be--that's what always happens when I say what I'm about to say. I get it. I don't disagree. Prohibition was a bad idea--yes, I know. But WHY was it a bad idea? Because the government helped poison booze to teach people a lesson? Because it encouraged prostitution? Because everything went underground and Al Capone got in on the gig? Arguably yes, all of the above. But while the country waited for the law to change, people went blind, people were prostituted, people died, families and communities were torn apart. You can blame the law, but the fact is, people did terrible things to each other because of the law, and the people most likely to suffer were those on the bottom rungs of the social ladder.

The fact that weed is "harmless" is not of interest to me. Because I did not grow up in a "white" neighborhood. Because I am amazed every time I ask a white person if they know anyone who has gone to prison for marijuana possession or intent to sell and they say "no." Because I do, and I have, and there are so many people.

How could I enjoy doing something with no fear of consequences that has destroyed so many other people's lives as they sit in prison for doing the same thing? Should the law change? Should sentencing change? AGAIN. NOT RELEVANT. I did not grow up believing that I could do illegal things and get away with it, because I saw so many people punished for minor nonviolent offenses. I've seen so many people punished for doing nothing at all. I once told friends who were visiting that no, they could not smoke up on my back porch, because I lived within sight of the police station. They thought I was ridiculous. Hey Katy, man, you won't get in trouble. It's cool. Nope, not cool. I own this place, and I would be responsible for the long arm of the law coming down on folks here if it were to happen, and I am not even benefiting from what's going on here, and I am not under the impression that laws were made for me to break with impunity because of my station in life. I remember dating a guy who had once OD'd on heroin, and he told me about the people in the hospital, the cops who were there, the pumping of his stomach. He was telling me how lucky he was to be alive and I kept thinking: and you didn't go to jail? They didn't arrest you, or cite you, or anything? I couldn't believe it. Now, do I think people with drug addictions should go to prison? No, of course not. I just think that many of them do. But not that guy. He was white, and from Indiana. So that's reason #2.

Reason #3 is this: Mexico.

Mexico's war on drugs is the blood diamond of our age. Before you pester me with the war on drugs not working! and see the law needs to change! and legalize! and it's not weed in Mexico anymore, now it's heroin and cocaine! I will say this: Of course, yes, sure, and I know that. But also: NOT RELEVANT.

This is the world we live in, this is the society that exists. As long as this is true, we should be willing to focus on those whose lives are being destroyed and ended rather than on our own desires. Dozens of students were kidnapped and presumably killed by a drug cartel in Mexico recently. And this is what I want you to know, to understand, to refuse to shy away from, to agree to see with your own eyes:

All indications are that the drugs that flow through those who massacred those students were headed for Chicago.

I live in Chicago. I'm sure there are people who are neighbors of mine who buy weed from Mexico; there are definitely suburban kids nearby buying heroin or coke that is funneled through Mexico. You can smoke weed, you can remain free because of it, you can benefit from it. If you are nodding your head to those statements, realize this: You are not dead. Your body is not buried in a mass grave so that someone somewhere living a life that is so safe and secure you can't even fathom it can get high. I used to be able to think of weed as a harmless thing. I know that there is less marijuana coming from Mexico, and other drugs are the hot ones now. But it doesn't really matter to me.

I think about people's faces being cut off their heads and sewn onto soccer balls. I think about 50 people being bludgeoned to death with a single hammer, each one waiting their turn, unable to flee because men with Uzis make them stay. I think of girls getting gang raped and killed and left in the desert and their families never knowing what really happened because they just disappear and no one in authority cares. I think of towns where girls who are still alive have stopped going to school, because drug cartels own their towns now, and it's not safe to go outside. I think about kids in Chicago who are caught up in the drug trade, who are used as pawns so others can make big bucks and live on Lake Shore Drive, I think about kids who can't cross this street or that one because if they do they'll get shot because these drug runners own that corner and those do not. And then I think that all of these people have lived these realities, and the justice that is coming is that maybe this drug will be legalized, and white people who have never faced negative consequences of possession or selling will be able to cash in on their homegrown.

I have never been to Mexico. I don't live in a neighborhood plagued by gang violence fueled by the drug trade. None of my family sits in prison on a possession charge. I have no "disappeared" loved ones. I might be plagued by the threat of sexual violence but I have not had to give up other civil rights because of it. My children are too young to know about drugs.

And yet.

I think about these things, about how my decisions and my reality and my privilege intersects with the reality of the world right now, as it is. I think about how people can't wait for the laws to change, because it's too late for them. I think about people who have seen their lives utterly destroyed over something that is just fun for those who receive it.

I live in this society, in this world.

I cannot un-see those faces on soccer balls. I cannot. I will not. If I were to say "harmless," I would be denying the truth or the importance of those people's lives and gruesome deaths.

I know I might have lost a lot of friends here. I know this might seem a long way off of Ferguson. But to me, it's not. If you are white, or live in the suburbs, or in general live a life of privilege, think about how many things you have done that are wrong, immoral, or illegal, or maybe even all three, that didn't land you in prison. That didn't lead you to be raped or tortured or killed in a hail of bullets. Think about the times that justice served you, and your expectation that it would.

And don't tell me you didn't realize. You just didn't have to, and therein lies the difference.