Workarounds
Give a stoner under prohibition a bud and a bucket of water, and he will figure out a way to smoke it.
Over, Under, Around, or Through
These are your options, when you encounter a barrier to your forward progress. You do not have the option to stop moving.
Social Movement in Praxis
Regular readers of this organ know of my vision for the next phase of resource mobilization in the interests of cannabis consumers (“pot smokers,” as NORML intentionally referred to them in a different semiotic era). I believe that if it is to exist it will be vested by the consumers, themselves.
Public work on the behalf of pot smokers has always been driven by those who were using it. LeMar was funded out-of-pocket by what grew to become a scattered tribe of the knowing. Amorphia (like LeMar) was founded in the Bay Area by marijuana users, capturing resources from other users through rolling paper sales, and funding the first statewide legalization initiative.
There has always been an entrepreneurial spirit to marijuana policy reform, and perhaps that is why NORML has typically drawn the large share of its annual operating budget from a small handful of American entrepreneurs, over the years.
Hugh Hefner founded Playboy, Tom Forçade was both a smuggler and founder of High Times, George Zimmer founded the Men’s Wearhouse, Richard Cowan started a litany of small companies, Randy Quast ran an independent trucking company, Rick Steves founded a well-known European touring company.
Along with the “whales” NORML built a national “Legal Committee” of usually-independent attorney-sponsors. Financial support from businesses came sporadically, and exclusively from smaller businesses. A consumer advocacy organization runs into the appearance of a potential conflict of interest, when it accepts sponsorship from the industry it purports to observe with a critical eye.
Indeed, “astroturfing” has been adopted as a public relations strategy. It is when a top-down exercise of power buys the appearance of bottom-up support, to hide the nature of the power dynamic. This was the case with the “smokers’ rights” groups that sprung up as increasing cultural restrictions were put on tobacco smoking, such as creating designated non-smoking areas in restaurants and outright bans on indoor smoking by other businesses. There were relatively few legal restrictions on tobacco smoking at the time.
There has never been a consumer advocacy organization for tobacco (or caffeine), in the way there have been a number of groups formed to advocate on behalf of marijuana users.
NORML drew large donations from North American entrepreneurs, growing quickly to fund a DC staff and gain national notoriety in the 1970’s. More than a decade later, following a cultural backlash in the form of an “anti-drug” social movement and the militarization of it sentiments by the state, cannabis consumers found hope in a new wave of reform organizations.
The Lindesmith Center’s and Marijuana Policy Project’s founders succeeded in their appeals to global billionaires, for endowments that covered creating the organizations and ensured their first years of operations. Students for Sensible Drug Policy was formed around the same time, though its startup was funded like NORML, by entrepreneur Robert Field. TLC and SSDP were omnibus drug policy organizations, while MPP focused on marijuana reform, and very specifically, on running state initiative campaigns.
All of the aforementioned reform groups were created to bring changes to a state of near-total prohibition, where marijuana was illegal in any detectable amount and possession was grounds for arrest and trial. That was how it was, not very long ago.
A Short Trip Down Memory Lane
When this song was released, there was no legal medical marijuana to be found anywhere in the United States:
So let’s get to the point, let’s roll another joint
And let’s head on down the road, there’s somewhere I gotta go.
Practicing Sociology via The Floral Society
Third-party censorship, courtesy of payment processors, dashed my hope of using Substack to host resources and aid in group-formation for The Floral Society. I believe the next phase of effective resource mobilization has to come from consumers themselves and needs to be very closely associated with their consumption.
For what it was worth, the launch looked promising, as ten people subscribed in less than three days. A subscription was to serve as the annual membership fee, until such time as the organization would be sufficiently funded to operate its own, independent platform.
[By owning the platform, TFS will be able to control its own content, rather than be subjected to the vagaries of an AI’s judgment of images, words, and intentions. Neither the platform nor the business model is predicated on infinite expansion, so I hope it will also be insulated from the effects of enshittification that might come from that.]
However, the “dumb” idea I had to give every TFS subscriber a co-subscription to Practicing Sociology (as well as give every paying Practicing Sociology subscriber a free subscription to TFS) means I should be able to run the group through this account, which has never been flagged for cannabis content.
So that is what I will do. Every paying subscriber to Practicing Sociology will have access to The Floral Society content and discussions. Beyond differentiating the two with a “TFS—” prefix in the subject line, it will be posted as Paid Content.
Practicing Sociology Without a License will remain public, The Floral Society content will be kept behind the paywall.
Subscriptions to Practicing Sociology Without a License are $50 for a full year, or $5 a month. Larger contributions are possible, and encouraged. Not only will you be helping to keep public sociology alive in these trying times, you will also be sponsoring the vanguard of cannabis consumer advocacy under legalization. Thank you for your support.