Perhaps you may want to read this before buying Jack Herer's books. I didn't know Jack but I've heard him speak. I think some of his stories (fabrications) are hurting the cause more than helping.
The kind of disinformation he has been pushing is the exact sort of campaigning that turns off credible decision makers who really do influence the future of cannabis.
Doesn't mean I don't respect the guy for whatever constructive things he did. I just think that elevating him beyond what he actually was is not good for the industry or the cannabis culture. Jack helped get government lies out in the open. I applaud him for that. He was attempting to establish a culture.
Let's do a better job than Jack did as our job is more to define than establish the culture. We are making history so let's make the cannabis cultures history a better one that it was.
Don't get me wrong I'm a total advocate but I don't hold to Jacks approach which was "The government lied to us therefore I'm going to lie back in order to even the score."
My approach is not to do things that discredit us or the culture. Look at what happened in LA. All kinds of buffoons dressed like neon hippies, with kilos of metal piercings, and tattoos on every inch of skin. I'm not against that nor am I against hippies. I'm against the "give us an inch and we'll take a mile" attitude so naively employed primarily by this minority of our culture.
Almost every incidence of interference of government (especially police and bylaw departments) interference and setbacks have been due to the high visibility of a minority of pot users who present themselves in a way that they alienate the masses we need for reform. The masses complain to the media and the police and lawmakers are duty bound to step in so that voters stop pressuring lawmakers and police to punish.
When people who are not recognized as pillars of society become the mouthpiece of a movement they tend to alienate the voting masses who look to stable, credible, sources of knowledge in order to make decisions that potentially threaten the health of their children.
Even though the "let's dress wild and look as extreme in our appearance as we can" crowd are often very interesting, well educated, and decent sensitive loving people, they are not the crowd that politicians, bankers, doctors, judges, juries, etc. typically trust for comprehensive reliable information.
If you are in that crowd who sees every victory, small or large, in the movement to legalize, decriminalize, or whatever degree of freedom you are hoping for, as an opportunity or excuse to be as public and free about as you can, even flaunting your newfound cannabis freedom, clamoring to be photographed in the press expressing your activist position -- you are probably not going to persuade the masses. You are more likely to alienate the masses than to persuade them.
These people seem to think that their approach will eventually desensitize the masses and the majority will become hippies. That will never happen in this current society.
When dispensaries look more like pharmacies or candy stores than crack houses (ok that's an exaggeration) but you know what I mean. I was a hippy but I'm not completely comfortable going into dispensaries that have potheads spilling out into the street. Places where loitering around the dispensary talking nonsense with other potheads is common.
Again these are generally really great people but they are socially unable to realize how they affect the cause because they see the masses more like "those who would take our pot away" and therefore are considered opposition. That seems to be why heads like to embellish and flaunt their beliefs publicly. They want to piss off the establishment that took away pot so that they feel guilty and give it back. That has been working in the opposite way you think.
We should put those days behind us and quit glorifying our medicine as a way to make it more acceptable. It doesn't work. Facts, data, studies, anything mainstream is how we make friends with the voters who can make all the difference. We want people to learn that cannabis is safe. Using people that the masses don't trust is a mistake.
I think Jacks passing onward should be a message to us that the era of the pissed off, loud shouting, demonstrations and riots, (I never heard of a "pot riot" before) and other grandstanding manouvers is over.
This is the age of mainstream and we need to think mainstream as there is no way you'll convert the masses with counter culture belief systems. The walls have to come down. The age of building cultural walls is over. Make friends with more of these people so they will love and trust you instead of being alienated.
