Page 8 - Sonoma County Gazette February 2020

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it can feel like a very looooonnng time to wait. But eventually, as is the case with cannabis policy and environmental justice, we finally hit a critical mass where solutions take root, literally and figuratively.
To illustrate this, look at the global parallels of cannabis becoming legal and the rapid response to our climate crisis.
Cannabis
I started working on global justice issues as an 18 year old in 1994. I began by organizing and collecting signatures for Proposition 215 in California
to allow medical patients access to cannabis for therapeutic purposes. The Proposition won, and California became the first state in the USA to legalize medical cannabis.
It then took just a little over a decade-and-a-half for a majority of the
states to legalize medical cannabis, and from then to see our first adult-use legalization efforts. Multiple countries have now decriminalized or legalized cannabis. Canada has moved forward with recreational legalization. Mexico’s courts are opening up legalization and supporting individual liberty. Even though the federal government is resisting till the end, the USA’s iron-grip ‘just say no’ dogma continues to erode internationally.
Rightfully, the drug war as a whole is being seen for what it is; a waste of time, money, and a destroyer of liberty (also a money machine for private prison shareholders and weapon-makers, but let’s save that one for another day). Imagine all of the creativity we have stymied in the world through caging people up for their non-violent use of a therapeutic substance, one that There is a global demand for social justice, to right the wrongs and free people from prison for a plant. Conservative and liberal legislators alike are passing cannabis laws to allow commercial use.
It is finally happening!
Environment
Also at 18, I began my life as an organizer for ecological restoration and environmental activism. From promoting local food systems to serving in local office as either a Sebastopol councilman or mayor from 2000-2008, I worked hard to both live by example and create policies that shaped lighter- living on the land.
From my activist beginning to now, we have seen a global surge in the development of local food production systems. We have also seen rapid implementation of green energy systems, and cutting edge development that allows for carbon negative homes and businesses. The electrification of our transportation network is well underway. There is a global demand that we protect soil and watersheds, and sink carbon in the ground.
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8 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 2/20