The Root of All Evil: Minnesota's Fear of Marijuana

In many ways, Minnesota is a state of heavily unprogressive and counterintuitive viewpoints and nowhere is this more glaring then when it comes to the topic of medical marijuana. The amount of resistance to this miracle plant is staggering, as Minnesota stands it's ground as the state with the strictest laws on cannabis treatment registration. So, what's their problem with allowing those in need of relief of unbearably painful symptoms a drug that has been proven to help? Well, drugs are inherently BAD, of course.

Take into consideration that Minnesota is one of the states that refuses Sunday liquor sales. Arguments for this stubborn, Prohibition-based law, typically insist that people are not conditioned or interested in purchasing alcoholic beverages on Sunday, hence, liquor stores would lose profits staying open on that day. Other such contention lies in the sanctimonious blow-hard idea of limiting liquor for the health and safety benefits of citizens. That the very fabric of society and human decency would crumble if alcohol was made available on Sunday in Minnesota. And, of course, another potential set back in ratifying Sunday liquor sales is simply the fact that the predominately Svandonavian residents and law-makers of the state have a known psychological proclivity for avoiding change at all costs. It's how it always has been so why change it?... Is clearly the underlying rationale behind this ancient, pointless law.

So if you can't buy a bottle of wine on Sunday or spirits of any kind in a grocery store ANY day of the week in the backwards state of Minnesota - it's a safe bet that the bureaucrats will fight tooth-and-nail the availability of a substance they know to be deemed illegal by the federal government. A major setback is, obviously, the generation of revenue, courtesy of pot and the "War on Drugs". Taking marijuana out of the equation in even the slightest way scares the hell out of police and state representatives. Even showing the least amount of leniency in prescribing terminally ill people the CBD compound - the very beneficial marijuana extract that does NOT get you high - has doctors hands tied; fearing malpractice accusations. Certain doctors, however, have their personal, deluded qualms with medical marijuana treatment, such as Dr. Charles Reznikoff, an addiction specialist at the Hennepin County Medical Center. Reznikoff is of the belief that there isn't enough scientific study on the use of medical marijuana to safely prescribe it to people with certain illnesses. He also seems to think that doctors certifying people in states such as Colorado are acting irresponsibly, based on one of his quotes taken from a July 2015 Star Tribune article:

"Some doctor who doesn't even know you, and who will never see you again, is allowed to rubber-stamp a cannabis prescription. Which really means you get to smoke marijuana in the form of joints. That's what's happening in other states."

Good thing we're in the best state with the most competent doctors who won't just prescribe bong rips with big rubber stamps. Dr. Reznikoff also says:

"And what Minnesota said is, if we're going to have medical cannabis, let's treat it medically. Let's have your doctor, who knows you and understands you and will be following you, understand the treatment and how it fits into the bigger picture of your medical illnesses."

Because, again, this isn't going on in any other state with legalized medical marijuana. All of THOSE doctors are just Cheech and Chong clones who don't understand their patients' illnesses and just want to blow smoke in their faces. All while Minnesota tightens the laws, refuses to acknowledge the miraculously positive results of the treatment and continues to withhold it from those who need it. Less than 200 people in MN have been registered for medical marijuana and even those people - on top of their debilitating conditions - have run the gauntlet of outrageous expenses and red tape just to be approved, while thousands of others are denied. Mush-mouth, former-alcoholic incumbent, Mark Dayton, ignores the pleas of grieving family members of cancer-stricken or epileptic children while he sits back, smiles and fist-bumps the police voters he works for. Dayton's even gone so far as to taunt these families by literally telling them that if they want it, to go buy it on the streets. Good, take advantage of people's desperation to ease a loved one's pain and encourage them to commit crimes so your badged goons can intervene and line your pockets.

Dayton's agenda and, that of his cabinet, appears to be based in a corrupt quagmire of greed that, in turn, wishes to feed on Minnesota's naive outlook on mind-altering substances. Marijuana..? A medicine? But, we all had it instilled in our psyches early on that marijuana is bad and to be avoided. Giving it to children? SICK children? How barbaric! Hell, just the word "marijuana" is about enough to make a hardheaded, Scandinavian Midwesterner board up their windows and hold their little blond children tight. At least, that's what Dayton wants. You want some relief from your illness? You're gonna have to fight for it, because Minnesota is apparently represented by callous, unyielding autocrats whose repressed outlook on drugs further proves the epitome of Midwest stigma.