U.S. Marines sic flame-thowers on a cannabis field in Chicago (1958)

Legalize Life (and Living)

This essay is part of a series on offensive horticulture.

I was born, bred, and raised in Monster Energy Drink, California.

Southern California abuts the US/Mexico border. The US's quasi-laissez-faire "build-a-wall" tribe believe that (1) cheap labor is good but (2) immigration from Mexico is bad.

Sometimes I try to act like an impartial essayist -- not today. I unabashedly support immigrants and psychonauts. Viva la vie!

Conservatives' cognitive dissonance breeds a "dont-ask-dont-tell" policy for undocumented labor. In Southern California, you can easily employ undocumented landscapers, day-laborers, kitchen workers, housekeepers, farmers, factory workers, nannies, etc.

Meanwhile, conservatives (1) withhold immigrants' health insurance and (2) complain about immigrants not having health insurance.

Here's the story that SoCal conservatives told me my entire life:

"The good Mexicans work really hard, but refuse to learn enough skills (e.g. English) to do white-collar jobs. The bad Mexicans bring crime/drugs and their friends who bring more crime/drugs."

This narrative is precisely how conservatives maintain their cognitive dissonance: they say that "good" immigrants work and assimilate, while "bad" immigrants commit crimes and multiply.

But I want to tell a different story. It's the story of how (1) the US profited from indigenous substances, while (2) wielding those same indigenous substances as pretexts for oppression.

Reminder: don't talk to police.

Any fruits [or Mexicans] in your car today?

Is that a banana in your pocket or -- GET ON THE GROUND! BANG! BANG!

Here in Southern California, we're having another major fruit fly quarantine:

Exotic fruit flies are of concern to the agriculture industry in California. The larval (maggot) stage of fruit flies such as Mediterranean fruit fly, Mexican fruit fly and oriental fruit fly can damage most of the fruits and vegetables grown in our state. These and other exotic pests have not become established in California due to (1) strict federal exterior and state interior quarantines, (2) a pest detection program, and (3) aggressive eradication programs when an infestation is discovered.

Federal and state quarantines protect against the entry and spread of exotic fruit flies by requiring strict adherence to treatment and inspection procedures for hosts. Smuggled and/or illegally imported fruit is the most common pathway of fruit fly entry into California.

If you drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas via I-15, you will be stopped at one of many "pest police" checkpoints, where they will also happen to search your car for drugs (and Mexicans).

And that's from California to Nevada -- within the US -- imagine driving through a US/Mexican border checkpoint.

It's lovely that the pest police protect us from "invasive species", but sometimes it's unclear whether they're talking about Mexican fruit flies or Mexican humans. Much of the "invasive species" rhetoric is subtext, as explained in this excellent podcast episode.

The whole situation is painfully ironic: (1) Industrial agriculture's fragile monocultures cause fast-spreading pest outbreaks. (2) Industrial agriculture corporations are responsible for shipping most truckloads of fruits/vegetables across borders. (3) Industrial agriculture corporations attract/employ/exploit the illegal immigrants who evade the same pest police responsible for stopping their outbreaks.

When corporations are caught illegally employing laborers, they pay a fine. The laborers lose everything.

In other words, industrial agriculture corporations (1) cause pest outbreaks, (2) spread pest outbreaks, and (3) exploit the exact people evading the pest police.

And yet you, dear reader, are the one whose freedoms and conveniences are compromised at these pest-patrol checkpoints.

And if you think that Mexican immigration into the United States isn't labor-related, consider the following chart:

To nobody's surprise, supplying more documentation (i.e. H-2 visas) solves the "undocumented immigrant" documentation problem.

I love visas. These H-2 visas disincentivize trafficking and certain avenues of exploitation. Everybody benefits from the fair exchange of goods and labor. H*ck yeah. Furthermore, if a laborer contributes to the wealth of your economy for a long time (without criminal charges), throw some citizenship at them! The US still has plenty of room for productive folks.

Pest-control is wielded as pretext for search/seizure of drugs (and Mexicans). Maybe drugs, too, are pretext for--

Any marijuana [or Mexicans] in your car today?

The political upheaval in Mexico that culminated in the Revolution of 1910 led to a wave of Mexican immigration to states throughout the American Southwest. The prejudices and fears that greeted these peasant immigrants also extended to their traditional means of intoxication: smoking marijuana. Police officers in Texas claimed that marijuana incited violent crimes, aroused a "lust for blood," and gave its users "superhuman strength."

-- Eric Schlosser via Reefer Madness

In 1937, the US narcotics commissioner made the following statement to congress:

Referring to table II, we find then that Colorado reports that the Mexican population there cultivates on an average of 2 to 3 tons of the weed annually. This the Mexicans make into cigarettes, which they sell at two for 25 cents, mostly to white high school students.

The transcript also featured this great quote: "I know at least 20 boys, some of them in school, whom I have seen smoking marihuana cigarettes. Sometimes three or four of them crowd into a telephone booth and puff on a single cigarette."

Also, the transcript refers to cannabis as "muggle" in a few places. We must reclaim this slang into modern parlance.

As of 2024, cannabis is still maximally illegal, i.e. the feds claim that the drug is dangerous and has no conceivable medical benefit. For comparison, cocaine and fentanyl are less illegal than cannabis.

Fun fact: Adderall and Ritalin may be safe enough to give children (for decades), but they are penalized the same as cocaine possession.

Cannabis remains a mechanism of selective law enforcement.

The automobile was born in the US alcohol prohibition era. Yada, yada, yada, the fourth amendment doesn't protect you and your car from unreasonable search and seizure.

PBR is openly selling THC drinks while ~40,000+ human beings rot in prison for cannabis-related crimes.

This whole thing reeks of pretext.

Any cocaine [or Mexicans] in your car today?

Long before PBR sold THC drinks, Coca Cola sold cocaine drinks:

Coca-Cola once contained an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass. (For comparison, a typical dose or "line" of cocaine is 50–75 mg.[76]) In 1903, it was removed.

After 1904, instead of using fresh leaves, Coca-Cola started using "spent" leaves – the leftovers of the cocaine-extraction process with trace levels of cocaine. Since then (by 1929), Coca-Cola has used a cocaine-free coca leaf extract.

Today, US pharma companies sell legal cocaine legally processed by this publicly-traded company. Also remember that no pharma executives went to prison for starting the opioid epidemic.

Recap: US Coca Cola became a billion-dollar brand from a plant that only grows in South America. Over the same period, the US government destabilized South America with a series of coups/invasions.

Reminder that Taco Bell, Del Taco, and El Pollo Loco are also US brands.

US citizens remain the world's biggest consumers of cocaine. Meanwhile, in Latin America, the US government created power vacuums via military force. The rest is history.

Note: I've heard "addiction" defined as "a problem that supplies its own solution". Sometimes it seems like the US is supplying lots of problems and solutions to Latin America.

Note: Sounds like a continued banana republic situation to me, but I'm tired of thinking about industrial agriculture.

Fun fact: The Wolf of Wall Street happened during the crack cocaine epidemic. Selective enforcement!

The resulting druglords assumed a perpetual reign of terror. The rampant violence/poverty created migrants, who seek refuge in the US to this day. In response, the US does worse than nothing to asylum seekers.

Within US borders, the modern Mexican cartels remain a scandalous stepchild of US foreign policy. US law enforcement has an evergreen bogeyman to use as pretext for selective enforcement, police militarization, etc.

Some smart people posit that Mexican drug cartels do not even exist as described.

Any peyote [or Mexicans] in your car today?

Short history lesson: humans lived on the North American landmass before other humans drew the borders on the maps and labeled places "Mexico" and "the United States". And long before humans lived on that landmass, lots of plants lived there. Some of those plants would impart strange effects onto human cortical tissue, i.e. getting high as h*ck.

Of course those plants still grow in North America. But you are generally not allowed to grow them or think about them or put them in your mouth or breath in their fumes:

Note: This table infuriates me. It gets more infuriating if you add South American plants like Ayahuasca.

Warning: you can legally purchase psylocibin shroom spores in most US states, so be extra careful not to search for that online and grow them in a box in your closet.

Warning: be extremely careful not to purchase San Pedro cactus on Craigslist and boil it to make mescaline.

These plants were really really important to the original American peoples, so as a consolation prize for killing their ancestors and stealing their land, the United States government allows them to smoke/eat the plants under religious exemptions. But nobody else!

Well, maybe pharma companies can use it too. But nobody else!

Most psychedelics will probably remain illegal until US corporations can get their early toeholds. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when Bayer is selling psylocibin pills to hospitals, PBR is selling psylocibin drinks, and humans rot in prison for eating shrooms off of cow poop.

Despite thousands of years of medicinal use and decades of scientific study, the government maintains that these plants are dangerous and confer no conceivable medical benefit. For this reason, these plants remain maximally illegal.

Smells like whole lot of pretext for selective enforcement cow poop to me.