If You Love Cannabis, Don't Be Tania

Perusing the cannabis industry headlines yesterday and came across a sweet one, IF YOU LOVE CANNABIS, BE THE CHANGE in Cannabis & Tech Magazine, (a really nicely designed industry pub, check out the Spring Issue here)

THE SCOOP

Boy, that headline sounds empowering, doesn’t it? Be the change… just like Gandhi! Gives me a Blue State woody just thinking about it.

But if I’ve learned anything from the State of Cannabis News Hour it’s that cannabis headlines are like Ecstasy from a stranger. Sometimes it’s a rave, and sometimes the Propaganda melts your brain.

At this point, I can smell anti-cannabis Propaganda like something on my shoe. That’s because William Randolph Hearst and the Propaganda Profiteers spent a century spreading bullshit and calling it fertilizer about God’s Favorite Plant.

We might laugh at his movie “Reefer Madness”, but that Propaganda worked!

The whole world bought it!

And they’re still buying it - - EVEN PEOPLE WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER, like to good folks from Cannabis & Tech Today, an industry publication! How have they let down their GUARD?

But wait, it's not so simple... the article wasn't straight propaganda, it was something more subtle... then a clue came to mind … a word... Rosebud…

No no no... that’s the wrong Hearst!

The word was Tania.

Fellow geezers will remember Hearst’s granddaughter. In 1974, Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and just a few months later, assumed the nomme du guerre "Tania" and helped them rob a bank! It was shocking to see a Hearst taking money with a machine gun instead of yellow journalism, but we soon learned a new concept: “Stockholm Syndrome”. This is when a prisoner starts to think like the captor, and even does things that are against her better nature.

And that’s what If You Love Cannabis, Be the Change is really about: Stockholm Syndrome.

THE DEEP DIVE

Clearly, the author was captivated by: the "recent study … analyzed the energy .. required to grow cannabis indoors and …the corresponding greenhouse gas emissions… "

He was tied up in the basement by "… smoking one joint comprised of indoor-grown marijuana is worse than eating a hamburger..."

And here’s where Stockholm Syndrome kicks in: "Tectonic plates recently shifted when Biden announced lofty goals for reducing carbon emissions... The Federal Government is supporting [by]… infusing farmers with additional funding if they can demonstrate the reduction of carbon emissions. ... This shift in Federal forces is going to put enormous pressure on sustainability practices … in the cannabis industry."

Wow, let’s go rob that bank!: "The opportunity for cannabis cultivation operators to execute … is now."

THE LOOP BACK

Not so fast, my little canna-bank robbers... Listen, there’s no question that sustainable cannabis is an important industry goal. I’d marry AOC and have Green New Deal babies if she’d have me.

But BIDEN and the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AIN'T DOING JACK FOR US.

• It’s federal regulations that force us to grow indoors, using all that energy

• Nobody is “infusing of additional funding” to cannabis growers, and besides..

• They can’t force us to hit federal carbon targets until they legalize The Plant.

IT’S NOT US THAT NEED TO CHANGE, IT’S THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

Let’s not do their work for them, people.

Until they legalize cannabis, keep your Stockholm Syndrome stories under control!