Marijuana enthusiasts of all ages and facial hair styles gathered last Saturday on Library Mall for the 33rd Annual Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival. They sought to answer one burning question: \Dude, what were we just talking about?""
Indeed, I was less than thrilled as I turned the corner at Lake and State to be hit with a tangy, herbal smell and the throbbing of a three-piece blues jam band whanging away at Big Brother and the Holding Company's ""Mercedes-Benz."" The congregation bothered me especially since I had planned on studying at Memorial Library, and those walls ain't as thick as they look. I went outside to study the crowd.
Many harvesters worked at booths, selling glass pipes or t-shirts proclaiming their love for pot, in case it wasn't readily apparent.
One man sold bongo drums. I paused for a minute to watch a potential customer arrhythmically patting at a large drum. I smiled at him and he smiled back, not into my eyes, but seemingly at a point about 15 yards behind my right ear. I turned around. Maybe I was missing something-all I saw was a wall.
Most attendees were in similar condition. I'd say ""visibly stoned"" and ""don't need drugs to look crazy"" were the day's most applicable labels.
And that's fine. I've got no problem with folks getting baked. What irks me is that herb smokers often frame their resistance to marijuana prohibition as a serious political crusade, when slogans like ""We're here, we're high, get used to it"" reveal that, for most of them, it is about getting tweaked.
Certainly, this country's drug laws need reform. We need to assess the effects of medicinal marijuana. And anyone seeking to battle economic inequality needs to consider drug laws that needlessly jail hundreds of thousands.
But the ralliers set back their own cause simply by showing up and revealing that most of them are just in ""the struggle"" to legalize their hobby.
Most regrettably, liberal city politicians I usually support spoke at the rally. I advocate sparking a debate about drug-law reform. But I don't think speaking to a large crowd of people, many of whom are too high to focus both eyes on the same thing let alone contribute rationally to a discourse on decriminalization, is a proactive approach to city government.
On a large scale, leftists have failed where right-wingers have succeeded-in communicating that their ideas are relevant and not too far-out for the general voting public to believe. If lefties wish to extend their influence beyond city politics, they're going to have to pick fights carefully. If I had to pick a central problem from among the myriad of maladies afflicting Americans, being insufficiently stoned would not be it.
Mercifully, around 4 p.m., the festival turned into a parade to the Capitol. As the crowd moved out, a man with a megaphone started the chant, ""We smoke pot and we like it a lot.""
I was laughing so hard on my way back into the library, I didn't notice that I had strayed into the middle of a group of four people chiefing up a bowl in front of Memorial's door.
I excused myself, thinking that maybe marijuana should be legal, and that it probably would be if the people pushing legalization weren't stoned all the time.
dlhinkel@wisc.edu.
