PUTNEY — We have just witnessed the display of the dictionary definition of paranoia: a classic example of how fear can disrupt clear and rational thinking.
Our Vermont legislature has voted that cannabis users are criminals, somehow not worthy of citizenship and to be disenfranchised from society. The message has been heard - loud and clear.
The pro-cannabis people say that sunshine is the best disinfectant: Bring marijuana out in the open, and treat it like alcohol.
The anti-cannabis people push back, blinded by their paranoid reefer-madness notions of marijuana. Three-quarters of our legislature is hung up with fear-ridden, irrational concepts - such as marijuana being a gateway to heroin - and some legislators even take the laughable position that marijuana is as dangerous as heroin.
Or the unfounded notion that a home grower would not want to protect their plants from prowlers, including the neighborhood kids.
Or the catch-22 notion that marijuana users are criminals. Yes, at face value they are breaking the law by using it. The underlying issue is, what harm are they committing?
It should be clear as day that the greatest harm done has been the law's disenfranchisement of three generations of Americans who have been caught using. In its wake, the law has created a subculture that thrives on contempt for the law. That is not good.
The underground is by nature a lawless place. Both sides would like to see an end to that.
So how is it that the majority of Vermonters believe the black market of cannabis cannot survive exposure to a legal cannabis market, yet three-quarters of our legislature is frozen in fear at such a vision?
Please don't send the paranoid back to the Statehouse.