Hero or Zero

Today at the park I ran into a guy I know. I guess you could say we're firends. I know him to be a decent and caring person that will give you the shirt off of his back. I didn't get his permission to use his name in this post so we will call him 'Cheech'. That was his nickname when I first met him. I had ran askew of the law a while back and that's where we met. We worked in the laundry together and I learned very quickly why he was there. You see, Cheech loves to smoke the refer. Weed, Ganja, Maui Wowie, Pot, Marijuana, you know the stuff. He would talk about it all the time. To ANYBODY. He would talk openly about it to the guards, who would confess to him that they smoke it. I always thought that was a little bit weird but I digress.

He sat down and joined the rest of our little group. As we talked, Cheech explained to me that he was getting ready to head back to jail for the 7th time. He violated his probation (AGAIN) when he failed the court ordered drug test. He says that he will not go a day without his bud. In his own words, "I will not NOT smoke it". He believes that it his constitutional right to smoke it and 'To Hell' with anyone that says different. He believes that it should be legalized all around the world and sold in packs of ten in every drug and convenience store in America.

Now I know that Cheech is not the only person in the world that thinks this way. I know that this has been an on going argument for some time now. I am neither for nor against it. I choose not to use drugs. That is my choice and I stand by it, but who am I to pass judgement on someone that does? My only issue is, that right now, marijuana is an illegal substance. There is no getting around that. It's the law. And no matter how many times you get arrested for it, it's still the law.

Cheech says that every time he goes before a judge he tells them how he believes that marijuana should be legalized. He lets the court know that if the U.S. government would just legalize pot it would cure all of our countries ills. New jobs would be opened up and unemployment would go down. The crime rate would drop because of the fact that marijuana would be so accessible that no one would need to commit a crime to get it. Because our government would most definitely levy a tax on the sale of marijuana, money would just come pouring in and The United States would be the richest country in the world.

Maybe he's right, I don't know. But I don't think he is going to get his point across while standing in front of a county judge as a repeat offender. I don't think that some judge is going to look down from his or her bench and say, "You know what Mr. Cheech? You are right. To hell with the law. It should be legalized. WE were wrong all along and now you are free to go". So, my question is: After being arrested 7 times and spending most of your adult life behind bars, when do you stop being an activist and start being an idiot? Cheech is 54 years old, and out of those 54 years he has spent 32 of them either in jail or prison. He has two sons and both of them are in jail right now. One will get out NEXT August, the other is scheduled to start a 5 year prison term on the next bus run. Both of them were arrested for possession of a controlled substance. So, he's passed this on to his children.

When I tried to explain to him that maybe he is going about things the wrong way, he told me that he was in the same league as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and even Abraham Lincoln. He says that they were enemies of the state once too. They were considered to be traitors and criminals, just like him. As far as Cheech is concerned, he is a hero. He then took the time to explain to me that there are some very 'important' and 'famous' people that are proponents of the legalization of marijuana. I did some research and He was right. Here is a link to a list of the 15 Greatest Proponents of Marijuana Legalization. Check it out, you might be surprised who's on this list.

I wanted to talk with him a little more about the fact that the people he mentioned didn't go around getting arrested every few months just to get their point across, but Cheech pulled a 'smoke' from his pocket and fired it up. I decided it was time for me to go. Besides, I promised SC I would vacuum the house today and that seemed to be my cue. As I gathered my things and got ready to leave, I showed him this picture that I had actually done while we were locked up. He said that it was perfect and it fit him to a T. "You should frame it", he said. I shook his hand and wished him the best of luck and left.