Story Pitch: Potisan Split, and What's Really at Stake

Now that initiative 502, or New Approach Washington, has made its way onto November’s ballot, I would like to propose a follow-up piece to Dominic Holden’s January 3rd article, ‘Stoner Clash,’ in which he briefly detailed the ironic internal struggle between medicinal marijuana patients and casual users just looking to stay out of court. The purpose of this follow-up article would be to focus on the legislative nature of the initiative as well as the controversy it initially stirred, and offer an informed take on what is sure to be a heated debate between now and November.

Much like California’s prop 19 -- which appeared on that state’s midterm ballot in 2010 -- I-502 is an initiative that if passed, would be the first of its kind in the country, and consequently carries with it a historic precedent as far as federal intervention in the matter is concerned. Furthermore, what makes I-502’s appearance in Washington particularly interesting is the fact that the regulation of marijuana would be overseen by the state’s Liquor Control Board (LBC), a system that currently imposes, comparatively speaking, stricter rules on the distribution of liquor than some states in the U.S.

The authors of I-502 have already laid out plans for the revenues collected via the distribution and taxing of marijuana, and these plans include, but are not limited to, public education programs and research projects, both of which would be conducted through the University of Washington and Washington State University, as well as funding for Healthy Youth Survey and roughly $80 million to be put into the general state fund. The measure would allow individuals over the age of twenty-one to possess and ingest marijuana for personal use, however it also imposes a new type of DUI, in which someone could be arrested for operating a vehicle with 5 ng/mL of THC concentrate in their blood. As it happens, it is this last point about DUIs that medicinal users oppose.

New Approach Washington is officially sponsored by a host of lawyers, professors, and public health officials, and endorsed by Democrats across the state, as well as the Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans and the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane, to name a few. Conversely, the measure is staunchly opposed by the group Patients Against I-502, who has the backing of David G. Arganian, a lawyer that specializes in DUI defense, and Jeffery Steinborn of the legal committee and board of directors for the National Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), amongst others.

It’s always sort of assumed that in the battle to legalize marijuana, smokers are united across the board, however the current divide between medicinal users and casual users poses an interesting twist. Furthermore, regulation under the LBC, and the grouping of marijuana with alcohol, poses an equally interesting twist. Through investigating both these pot legislation anomalies, I believe a compelling look at marijuana reform, a topic that is spreading rapidly across the nation, is sure to arise, and by doing both sides of the argument equal justice, Washington’s citizens will be left with an informed, unbiased view of New Approach Washington.

A Post-Structural Nature, or Bioethics in the Anthropocene Epoch

We are currently living in an age in which the effects of industrialism, and more specifically, industrial agriculture, are beginning to pierce through the smog that once cloaked the devastating reality of our culture’s increasing addiction to consumption and convenience. Put another way, as the world’s population increases, factory farms and urban developments are caking up across the globe like tar in the lungs of a seasoned smoker, and the concrete jungle is relentlessly and blindly laying waste to a once fertile and robust land, sea, and air.

These effects are now so grossly apparent that in early 2000, Nobel-Prize winning scientist, Paul Crutzen coined the term Anthropocene, or the newest geological era to hit our humble planet since the Holocence epoch that marked Earth post-ice age 12,000 years ago. According to Crutzen, the Anthropocene epoch is defined by, “human dominance of biological, chemical, and geological processes on Earth,”# that have begun to inflict measurable and irreversible effects on the ecosystem for untold millennia to come. In his article, “Living in the Anthropocene: Toward a New Global Ethos,” Crutzen asserts that, “to master this huge shift, we must change the way we perceive ourselves and our role in the world.” He goes on to explain that,

“teaching students that we are living in the Anthropocene...could be of great help...This name change would stress the enormity of humanity’s responsibility as stewards of the Earth. It would highlight the immense power of our intellect and our creativity, and the opportunities they offer for shaping the future.”#

Essentially, what Crutzen is calling for is an entire restructuring of the way in which we discuss nature, and consequently, our relationship to it. To truly understand the magnitude of such a task however, we need to first understand just how entrenched our culture is in its current epistemology, and if our goal is to restructure our current discourse on nature, a good place to start would be with post-structuralist thinker, Michel Foucault’s essay, “The Discourse of Nature.”
According to Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab, “post-structuralism holds that there are many truths, that frameworks must bleed, and that structures must become unstable or decentered.”# Ultimately, post-structuralism boils down to a refutation of the fact that our lives are informed by grand narratives, falsely dictating our realities and leading us to interact with the world in ways that do not coincide with any sort of truth. Thus, Foucault opens “The Discourse of Nature” with the simple yet poignant idea that, “the theory of natural history can not be dissociated from that of language.”# That is, after thousands of years of philosophical and religious texts claiming man’s dominion over nature, we have reached a point in which to think in any way contrary to that is to be a regressive, dirty hippie.

Furthermore, the only way to discuss nature is to use the language we have imposed on it, and given our current relationship to nature, that language is unarguably one in which Earth is deemed inferior to the cunning inventiveness of man. As Foucault states, "Natural history is contemporaneous with language...[It] cannot and should not exist as a language independent of all other languages unless it is a well-constructed language--and a universally valid one."# Here we see the dire need to heed Crutzen’s advice and start at the top with a universal name change. In doing this, we are allowed the opportunity to look at Earth from a completely new point-of-view, albeit one that admits our foolish treatment of it. Nevertheless, unless we admit defeat, we are doomed to continue discussing the problem of our relationship to the planet in a way in which we subjugate and bastardize it.

Despite the fact that people are beginning to look at man’s place in nature from a more symbiotic angle, from thinkers like Crutzen to those who shop at their local farmer’s markets, it will be horrendously difficult to make any serious strides unless everybody gets on the ‘eco-’ train. As Foucault somewhat bleakly points out, "[life] is a category of classification, relative, like all the other categories, to the criteria one adopts."# Thus, until the majority of the world’s inhabitants regard everything from the soil to the stars as bearing some semblance of life, and thus some semblance of an integral relationship to the rest of the world, we will continue to run up against those individuals who want to innovate the environment into oblivion.

When taken together, Crutzen’s call for a new geological era and Foucault’s theories on our current discourse of nature provide a compelling argument for just how lost we are in the throes of the wilderness. Though there are still some scientists and politicians that want to vehemently deny global warming and man’s impact on the environment, the rest of us need to stand up and acknowledge our selfish tradition with our home. It has always struck me as kind of odd that we are always hearing of missions to the moon in which we drill the surface, searching for resources that can sustain human life. Clearly we are so entrenched in an anthropocentric world view that our notions of technological quick fixes are now being carried over to a planet that we are not even inhabiting yet. Thus, unless we fundamentally change the way in which we structure our knowledge of the natural world, we will quickly, and most likely painfully, phase ourselves out of it.