FREE THE WEED 03
A Column by John Sinclair
Cinco de Mayo, the 5th of May, is Liberation Day in Holland. It marks the end of
the brutal German occupation of The Netherlands during World War II, and the
Dutch people celebrate their deliverance from the evil Nazi regime with festivals
and gatherings throughout the country.
Liberation Day is a jubilant affirmation of the inalienable human right to
freedom and liberty and self-determination. And it keeps alive in the national
consciousness the triumph of humanism and democracy over the insanely cruel
system of oppression and exploitation imposed and enforced by Adolph Hitler
and his psychotic Nazi regime.
Liberation Day has big meaning for the Dutch people because they know what
it was to be occupied and ruled by the Nazis. They know what freedom means
because they were not free and then they were liberated.
In turn, the Netherlands has helped pioneer the emergent European Union—
now 27 member states including former bitter enemies in both World Wars and
the Cold War as well—to try to prevent any further wars among themselves and
secure enduring continental peace.
The tiny nation’s experience with occupation and liberation seems also to have
engendered an extraordinary spirit of tolerance and personal freedom amongst
the populace. Dutch people tend to enjoy their freedom as individual citizens to
live and comport themselves as they may wish as long as they are not harming
others.
Professional sex activity is tolerated and even licensed and allowed to thrive in its
own district. Recreational drug users of every sort are not regarded as criminals,
and possession of small amounts of one’s drug of choice is not regarded as a
crime.
Most spectacularly, the Dutch allow free use of cannabis and provide for its retail
sale over the counters of hundreds of licensed coffeeshops around the country.
There are nearly 250 operative coffeeshops in Amsterdam itself, warmly and
efficiently serving the cannabis-smoking community with top-quality Dutch-grown
marijuana and imported hashish which may be smoked and enjoyed on the
premises.
For an American, the situation in the Netherlands is as close to a condition of
social freedom as one can imagine. In the United States, cannabis users are
legally defined as criminals and hounded and persecuted by the police all their
lives as smokers. Citizens are subject to drug testing as a condition of steady
employment or for the successful completion of a probationary sentence, and
they live in constant fear of police raids on their homes and businesses and
the incessant stops, searches and seizures of their personal stashes—even
prescribed medical marijuana—when arrested in their cars or public places.
The burgeoning American police state has been built on the framework of the
government’s 40-year War on Drugs, in which the preponderance of victims of
the drug warriors are marijuana smokers. Hundreds of thousands of American
pot smokers are incarcerated in federal and state prisons as we speak, but they
represent only a mere fraction of the citizenry victimized by the police and courts
simply for smoking marijuana.
A vast industry of punishment and social pain has been erected on the backs of
American marijuana smokers. Legions of special narcotics police stalk the streets
of our communities seeking to harass and arrest every marijuana user or supplier
they can find. The arrestees are dragged before special drug courts and tried
by special drug prosecutors in front of special drug judges armed with the most
draconian set of drug laws imaginable.
Once convicted, usually following a guilty plea arranged by one of the thousands
of lawyers who specialize in representinging drug law offenders, the smoker
is fined, sentenced to a probationary term and ordered into a drug treatment.
Their urine is assessed in drug testing labs and their conduct scrutinized by drug
treatment professionals, drug probation officers and the ever-present drug police.
That’s a whole lot of people and facilities lined up against marijuana smokers
and dedicated to our capture and punishment. Thousands and thousands
and thousands of Americans are employed at taxpayers’ expense by the
insane mechanism created by the War on Drugs, and this vast force of drug
law enforcers prospers by delivering severe punishment to an entire national
community of recreational—and even medicinal—marijuana smokers.
Since my release from prison as a marijuana law offender 40 years ago—and
now as a licensed Medical Marihuana Patient in the State of Michigan—I’ve
managed to avoid arrest while smoking quietly each day, but the shadow of the
drug Gestapo is always hovering overhead no matter where you are. Carrying a
small smoking stash in public or even toking in your home can bring serious grief
if you’re apprehended, and the pothead lives in a continuous state of terror even
if the police remain at bay.
Liberation for the marijuana smoker in America, sad to say, is not on the near
horizon. The mammoth drug law enforcement industry built up around the War
on Drugs channels billions of dollars each year to the worst segments of our
society, and I’m afraid they’re so deeply entrenched that their overthrow will be
particularly problematic.
But liberation for the weedhead is real when one arrives in Amsterdam.
Purchasing and smoking cannabis is perfectly okay, and the police have no
interest whatsoever in the individual smoker. All of a sudden one is no longer a
criminal, and the veil of fear and trembling rises and floats away in the breeze.
Life begins anew in liberated territory, and we are free to live our lives as
marijuana smokers without fear at last.
Liberation from the Nazi oppressors, liberation from drug police terror—these are
good things, and we will continue to celebrate them as long as we may live.
—Detroit
February 26-28, 2008/
Amsterdam
May 30, 2011
© 2011 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
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