Huxley’s Soma…and Ours |
CounterPunch Exclusives
CounterPunch Exclusives
Huxley’s Soma…and Ours
In November it will be 30 years since California voters passed Proposition 215, legalizing cannabis for medical use. Last Sunday at the state fair some of the activists involved in that campaign were given awards –heavy medals that said “Pebbles Trippet Lifetime Achievement.”
I made the drive to hot, flat Sac to see the trailer of a film about Pebbles and a documentary about the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers’ Club, original headquarters of the Prop 215 campaign. Fairgoers were checking out the vendors’ wares and showing almost zero interest in the OGs. Like the “Cannabis Cup” of yesteryear, the highlight of the event was an awards ceremony at which growers were honored with blue ribbons that will facilitate sales in the year ahead.
The show-runners hardly paid lip service to “medical use.” People were enjoying themselves. So this is our victory, I kept thinking: access to soma that’s safer than Prozac (or was, until Whiteman did to marijuana what he had done to coca and poppies).
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, one of the slogans promoting........