Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee… And render unto our neighbours SEVENFOLD into their bosom their reproach…
— Psalm 79
Iowa’s restrictive, expensive, and statistically problematic nascent medical marijuana industry is being economically assassinated. Ultimately, while medical marijuana is doing great things for cardholders in Iowa with chronic pain, the majority of users can’t afford to purchase products.
As a result, data released by the State on October 31st shows first time cardholders aren’t choosing to renew their cards for a second year of use.
This lack of medical cannabis patient participation is absolutely 100% Republican politicians fault in Iowa for allowing Governor Reynolds to first avoid the issue, then sign a cowardly veto in private, without offering any discussion or room for improvements.
So much for liberties being prized in Iowa under an authoritarian Governor.
Here’s what real Iowa marijuana users said this past week:
Update on efforts to obtain a federal cannabis exemption for Iowa
Letter To US Senator Chuck Grassley: Help Iowa Gain Federal Cannabis Approval!
MedPharm Iowa dispensary receipt, version 2021 — 68% of Iowa Patients can’t afford these prices yet
This Email Provides A Solution To Federal Interference With South Dakota’s Medical Cannabis Laws
Iowa’s U.S. House and Senate delegation is failing to protect medical marijuana patients
The fault with Iowa’s marijuana industry lies not with advocates, and not with any of the businesses running the program. The fault lies solely with Republicans. This current “Republican” party hates freedom and liberty worse than Democrats. At least enemies in the Democratic Party who tell you they hate you allow you the dignity to know where they stand. Iowa Republicans prefer blowing smoke, preaching liberty while vetoing liberty, enabling problematic behaviors rather than solving medical cannabis users financial dilemmas.
With the stroke of a pen vetoing marijuana freedom for sick people, Iowa’s Republican leadership showed their contempt and hatred for the little people in the state. And boy — does the racist Republican position on marijuana uphold and uplift racism in small town Iowa, where black people, minorities, and marijuana users are harassed and intimidated — even threatened physically if they don’t leave the racist small towns — for listening to jazz music in 2021 and daring to take part in the ever expansive legal marijuana world.
This shameful racism will never be forgotten. WeedPress sees your evil. Once banished, this evil will be remembered.
Religious Freedom Exemptions: Sacramental Use Of Cannabis
Minnesota Court of Appeals: 15 Year Old Rastafarian Has Religious Right To Possess Cannabis Pipe
Minnesota: Judge Grants Rastafarian Exemption From Probation Drug Testing
See you in the real courts.
In closing, here’s an excerpt from this book:
Jesus did not tell his oppressed hearers not to resist evil. That would have been absurd. His entire ministry is utterly at odds with such a preposterous idea. The Greek word is made up of two parts: anti, a word still used in English for “against,” and histēmi, a verb that in its noun form (stasis) means violent rebellion, armed revolt, sharp dissention. In the Greek Old Testament, antistēnai is used primarily for military encounters—44 out of 71 times. It refers specifically to the moment two armies collide, steel on steel, until one side breaks and flees. In theEquality: The Impossib…Martin van CreveldCheck Amazon for Pricing. New Testament it describes Barabbas, a rebel “who had committed murder in the insurrection” (Mark 15:7; Luke 23:19, 25), and the townspeople in Ephesus, who “are in danger of being charged with rioting” (Acts 19:40). The term generally refers to a potentially lethal disturbance or armed revolution. A proper translation of Jesus’ teaching would then be, “Don’t strike back at evil (or, one who has done you evil) in kind.” “Do not retaliate against violence with violence.”
The Scholars Version is brilliant: “Don’t react violently against the one who is evil.” Jesus was no less committed to opposing evil than the anti-Roman resistance fighters. The only difference was over the means to be used: how one should fight evil.
There are three general responses to evil: (1) passivity, (2) violent opposition, and 3) the third way of militant nonviolence articulated by Jesus. Human evolution has conditioned us for only the first two of these responses: flight or fight. “Fight” had been the cry of Galileans who had abortively rebelled against Rome only two decades before Jesus spoke. Jesus and many of his hearers would have seen some of the two thousand of their countrymen crucified by the Romans along the roadsides.
Why then does he counsel these already humiliated people to turn the other cheek? Because this action robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate. The person who turns the other cheek is saying, in effect, “Try again. Your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. I am a human being just like you. Your status does not alter that fact. You cannot demean me.”
Such a response would create enormous difficulties for the striker. Purely logistically, what can he do? He cannot use the backhand because his nose is in the way. He can’t use his left hand regardless. If he hits with a fist, he makes himself an equal, acknowledging the other as a peer. But the whole point of the back of the hand is to reinforce the caste system and its institutionalized inequality. Even if he orders the person flogged, the point has been irrevocably made. The oppressor has been forced, against his will, to regard this subordinate as an equal human being. The powerful person has been stripped of his power to dehumanize the other. This response, far from admonishing passivity and cowardice, is an act of defiance.
Excerpt from Wink, Walter. Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way (Facets)
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