Home Growers Corner
WHAT ...
A 26-Year-Old Mom Jailed for Pot Use by Jay Richardson , contributing writer
Happy New Year , everyone ; I hope all of you have a great 2024 . We are heading into a year full of politics and opinions , so I wanted to get a head start . If you follow my column , and I hope you do , you know politics and opinions are not my thing . I teach people how to make marijuana-infused gummies and give cannabis grow tutorials .
My article this month was supposed to be something in that same vein . I was leaning toward how to clone marijuana and what strains of cannabis deserve to be cloned , but then I read the newspaper . For those of you under 45 years old , a newspaper is something we used in the olden days to get information . It ’ s kind of like an iPhone , but when you touch the pictures , they don ’ t do anything .
Normally , I like to get the Sunday New York Times , but sometimes it ’ s unavailable . On those occasions , I pick up a USA Today . That ’ s what happened this week . It was a typical Sunday morning as I sipped my coffee and read the paper . Then I read a headline that made me stop and say , “ What the hell are you talking about ? That can ’ t be correct .”
I am not a journalist , and I definitely don ’ t consider myself a social activist , but when I saw this , I had to say something . The article I will discuss appeared on November 17 , 2023 , in USA Today ( page 6A ), 1 and the headline said , “ Mother sentenced 21 months over pot use .”
I did a double-take and read the words again . Yes , the article said that a woman in Virginia was going to prison for almost two years because she was a marijuana user . She is not a user of hard drugs and did not possess an illegal amount of marijuana . The woman in question lives in Virginia , where marijuana is legal , and any adult can have up to one ounce . This unfortunate person is indeed going to federal prison because she is a habitual marijuana user .
The whole story is like an onion of insanity . Each layer of craziness has another layer hiding beneath it . I cannot stress enough that I am not trying to express strong opinions on controversial subjects , and the details of this case are not necessary to the points I want to make . The USA Today ’ s article , written by Christopher Cann , Minnah Arshad , and Cybele Mayes-Osterman , used a quote from the court records that said the prosecutors stated , “ This case is not about marijuana .”
If the case wasn ’ t about marijuana , why is that what the 26-year-old mom was specifically charged with ? I imagine that many of you might remember the case last January of the young boy who took his mother ’ s gun to school and shot his teacher . The teacher , thank God , survived . The boy was only six years old at the time of the incident . His mother is the woman in question .
This story is about marijuana and guns , but I guess , much like the prosecutors , I must admit that it ’ s not about that at all . The story is about a conflict between federal law and state law . You can ’ t have one law that says up and another that says down and expect people to follow both . What you end up with is a muddled mess in which otherwise law-abiding citizens are , at best , confused and , at worst , breaking federal laws .
Many of you are aware that marijuana is forbidden by federal mandate but permitted in Missouri , along with many other states and the District of Columbia . The District of Columbia , which is where our federal government is located , has legal cannabis , yet marijuana is still a violation of federal law . Are you following me on this one ? Because I ’ m not sure that I am . The government must either enforce its own laws or pass laws that the people want . The people have spoken . We want legal marijuana . Federal legalization is long overdue .
I once again must reiterate that the point of my argument isn ’ t about marijuana . Specifically , it ’ s about the law not seeming like some weird sort of acid trip . I ’ m also not discussing guns or gun laws . But here I go , discussing guns and gun laws . When a person applies for a “ Federal ” firearms permit , one of the questions on the application is , “ Do you use marijuana ?” If you answer “ yes ,” your application is automatically denied . This caused many of my friends not to get
36 January 2024