The Green Naysayers

I read this quote in the NYT from a 73-year-old woman, Mary Jean Braun. “It’s a big deal to have a dispensary in New York. Personally, I used cannabis when I was in college, and I loved it. But because it wasn’t legal, I switched to alcohol. I’m 73 now, and my doctor says I should stop drinking. Hopefully, this will help. It’s a big step forward for our country. I think it will make people healthier in the long run.”

I love this woman. She gets it. Pot, what it was called when Mary Jean smoked it, should have never gone from being legal to illegal. Think about how much money the Government would have generated and how pharmaceutical products would have caused less destruction. I believe in pharmaceutical products, but not ones you become addicted to.

Instead, we are attempting to build an industry that has been operating in the grey area for decades. Legal dispensaries are generating so much revenue quickly because people are just changing their spending habits. Eventually, some will be first-time takers, particularly those with sleep and pain issues, but most people who walk into a dispensary have and do smoke weed.

The naysayers using their platform, such as NYU professor Susan Shapiro writing for the Daily News, complaining about the smell of weed and other jabs, are absurd. Do we remember the smell of cigarettes on the streets in years past, or how about the smells of rotten food or even delicious aromas? Should we set laws against that?

Additionally, Shapiro claims she was hooked on “marijuana” because it is “wildly addictive.” The research shows otherwise. What you were addicted to was the attitude adjustment it gave you. Dig deeper. Her stats are being pulled from where? She notes, “who would want to live across from a marijuana mall”? Who would want to live across the street from a bar or a liquor store? Not easy to be a NIMBY n a city of over 8m people, where we all live on top of each other.

There were naysayers about the Internet, too—about cleaning up and changing Washington Square Park, which is now better than ever. There are always naysayers, and the media grabs onto it and pushes the insanity.

Some days I feel like I am living in the belly of the naysayers beast, and it isn’t pretty.