Facebook Commandos

For those of you who use Facebook, I have pity on you.  It’s not a friendly place.  Today, people calling themselves advocates for full legalization of marijuana in Iowa are complaining about two groups we have here in Iowa and the complaints are similar toward both groups.

1. You have a group called Iowans 4 Medical Cannabis advocating for medical use, saying that it won’t lead to legalization of non-medical use.
    
2. You have a group called Iowa Hemp Association advocating for industrial use, saying it won’t lead to legalization for non-industrial use.

This makes these so-called advocates angry, because they see medical use and industrial use as subsets of a greater whole (full legalization).  Full legalization would give the patients their medicine and save the trees at the same time.  I won’t go into what full legalization looks like, because I don’t really know what it looks like.  Alcohol is not fully legalized.  Tobacco is not fully legalized.  Alcohol and tobacco are both toxic and marijuana is not, so I can’t see them as being the same.  Even cocaine and morphine are legal under certain restrictions.  Even methamphetamine is legal under certain restrictions.  So, I think we need to come up with something unique for marijuana, since marijuana is safer than all of these things we already accept under certain restrictions.

What drives medical advocates is that they are being tortured by the pharmaceutical industry.  Medical users are being forced to use toxic chemicals instead of a safe plant.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t take what a person being tortured says as seriously as I take what a person says who has time and the ability to think clearly.  These patients are being tortured, plain and simple.  I’m not going to attack them for trying to save their lives and the lives of their loved ones.  Things are not okay in this country, and this is a manifestation of it.  Give the patients a break.  They need our help, not a bunch of cheap talk.

What drives industrial advocates is entrepreneurship.  This is a fundamental value in our society, making money.  We can’t expect capitalism to go away.  And, besides, hemp is a good product.  You can make lots of good stuff from it.  I could complain about capitalism, but it’s not going away.  The market drives capitalism, so if you’re offended, then don’t buy what’s being sold, plain and simple.

So, what I see missing is that the people complaining on Facebook and claiming they have the higher (pardon the pun) ground are showing up at events they did not organize and complaining about the people who did organize them.  What a colossal waste of time.  Talk is cheap.  Instead of doing something productive, they talk trash about others.  It’s pathetic.  This proves they are not representing any higher issue at all.  They represent smallness, plain and simple.  I like to call them Facebook Commandos, or armchair quarterbacks if you want to go with an older colloquialism.

I don’t know how anyone can say that medical use or industrial use will not lead to full legalization, since we are seeing full legalization now as a direct result of the many useful things marijuana can do.  But, if people want to say the many uses of this plant will not lead to further legalization, let’s not waste our time attacking them for it.

If these whiners on Facebook would go find something productive to do, instead of complaining about people doing good things, we’d all be a lot better off for it.

I don’t know about you, but when someone starts promoting the benefits of marijuana, I want to thank them for it.  Attacking them on Facebook is not something I can thank anyone for.