| Multicolored light beams from behind the stage were punching through smoke clouds rising from the floor level as I sat back and freely enjoyed the show Friday night at Jacobs Pavilion in Cleveland.
Dispatch and O.A.R. were in town with special guest G. Love, and I was watching it all from elevated bleachers as the aroma of burning cannabis continued to fill the open-air amphitheater on the west bank of The Flats: one of the more unique outdoor music venues in the country.
Midway through the concert, a 500-plus-foot freighter that recently entered port from Lake Erie slowly navigated a bend in the curvy Cuyahoga River as it carried a load of iron ore to a steel plant. When it blew its horn, 5,000 concert goers erupted. The music and vibes pressed on.
But whenever I attend a deafening show, I find myself isolated in thought.
Why is letting loose to some music with a little recreational marijuana still illegal in Ohio? It just seems so happy and right.
As the show played on, I thought “at least we’re not in Singapore,” where a 49-year-old man was executed by hanging last month for trafficking a couple pounds of cannabis. He lived the last seven years of his life in prison.
At least we’re not in Russia, where Brittney Griner was recently sentenced to nine years in prison on possession charges.
I thought about my old man, a Vietnam veteran who visited Thailand on his R&R in 1969, when the dictatorship still had the death penalty for marijuana. He was able to get some anyway. Hell, he could get the death penalty just about any day in Vietnam.
More than half a century later, Thailand became the first Southeast Asian nation to legalize cannabis.
But here we are almost two years into the Biden presidency and still no freedom in the land of freedom. And the holdup comes down to one thing: a lack of political will.
That’s how Marc Hauser, president of Hauser Advisory, put it in our most recent episode of “Beyond the Show.”
“I’ve always been very pessimistic about the federal government doing anything to make life easier for this industry,” Hauser said. “I just don’t think that there’s much political will or capital to do anything about cannabis.”
Hauser’s conversation with CBT Digital Editor Eric Sandy preludes Cannabis Conference 2022’s panel session, “Federal Cannabis Legalization In The United States: What Will It Mean?”
What it will mean for the industry and state-legal operators is the big question mark.
What it will mean for others is a difference between shackles and freedom.
-Tony Lange, Associate Editor | 