Legalizing Marijuana: If You Will It, It Is No Dream

Tomorrow, Thursday, January 26 at 8:00pm is the panel discussion in Kresge Town Hall entitled "Legalize it? Pros, Cons, and the Jewish Perspective." What do you guys think?

It's funny, I heard when they were trying to find people to be on this panel, they couldn't find a single person in opposition to the legalization of marijuana in some form. That's Santa Cruz for you. No, but seriously.

Truth be told, one of my first experiences being at Santa Cruz all those four years ago had to do with pot, during the first week of school. It was September 17th, 2002, and word had been spreading around the Merrill dorms that the Santa Cruz City Council was going to be giving away free medicinal marijuana from the steps of City Hall in protest to the federal government's bust of a small medical marijuana farm.

Of course I showed up. Not to receive any pot, mind you, but because I was absolutely incredulous that such rumors could be true. So first I had to find the place, which wasn't too hard seeing as how there was a huge crowd and news vans and live music (Santa Cruz, what do you expect?). So everyone was milling around before the pot-giving would take place. I soon found out that only card-holding patients would be receiving the goods, but yes indeed, free pot would be given out. It was worth milling around just to see it happen--City Council giving out free pot in public from the steps of City Hall, with police protection. What a trip.

At one point, I noticed someone darting in and out of the crowd, leaning in to people as he passed them, holding a basket of something. I realized it was a basket of cookies, and he was distributing to whomever wanted one. Now, I don't want to say this guy looked like a stoner, but he had a certain glimmer in his eye, a certain jolly, almost nymph-like mischievous look on his face. As he approached me, he leaned in and with a furtive grin, whispered, "Pot cookies." Now, this was a particular situation that I was completely not ready for. A situation like this didn't exist in my reality at the time. I made a number of quick assumptions to make up for my extreme confusion, took a cookie, nodded and gave a small smile of 'thanks,' as he moved along leaning in and offering his cookies to others in the crowd.

I stood in slight shock, trying to figure out what was going on. I reasoned that, first of all, no one would give away a real pot cookie. They would sell it for sure. And anyway, who would be brash enough to go around in public offering, indiscriminately to give away pot cookies? What if there were undercover police, or narks, or something (remember, I was a freshman)? So, I figured it wouldn't hurt to eat the cookie, and so I did. Well, I'm not going to write what happened after that here. You'll have to ask me yourself for that. But just so you know it all really happened, check out the pics here and read an article about it here.

And come to the event to find out what Judaism has to say about it.