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Editorial
What IS 4/20?

There's a lot of folks making big waves this year about the way 4/20 is landing on a Thursday, when weekly newspapers have traditionally hit the newsstands.

What is 4/20, you ask? It's a euphemism, a big secret nodding in-the-know term meant to signal pot use, marijuana legalization, and that whole phenomenon long thought to be a minority youth-thing until new polls came out this month that found that over half of all Americans have smoked pot at some point in their lives, with about half of those still partaking in the evil weed.

The term itself comes from a group of people in San Rafael, California, who used the term in connection with a plan, in fall 1971, to search for an abandoned cannabis crop, based on a treasure map rumored to have been made by the grower. The group would meet at the local high school, at a statue of Louis Pasteur, using the code word "4:20." The term got picked up by a High Times magazine editor (who's lived for years in the area here), popularized in that way we now call "viral," became associated with The Grateful Dead, and has since become linked with the date of April 20 as a counter-culture holiday, a time when marijuana aficionados around the world imbibe, in private and perhaps in public, and basically test authorities to start moving faster towards legalization of the plant and its usage, which at present is classified by our federal government in the same basic class as heroin.

We bring all this up because beyond all the military and other threats of the day, this seems to be a hot topic that crosses many normal partisan boundaries. Look at the number of states that have, or are in the process, of legalizing pot for recreational use. Or the fact that Canada, our great northern neighbor, is looking to okay cannabis use as a means of better regulating its use. Why? Because they see it being used more, and feel it would be better to treat it as something that exists, and can be dealt with more safely... while also making some money off it for everyone.

The fact that there are bonafide medical benefits to marijuana is pretty much standard knowledge across the U.S. at this point, with more and more states allowing medical pot use in some fashion, and only a few hold-outs still pushing to keep it out of any hands. Why, even though our own state's medical marijuana protocols have seemed somewhat byzantine, at best, the governor just announced this week that the state is hosting its first ever Industrial Hemp Summit in Ithaca to "build on the momentum of the region's growing agriculture industry as part of the Southern Tier Soaring economic revitalization initiative." The state's also allowing some actual hemp farming research permits, including two farms within the Hudson Valley; expanding research facilities at Cornell University, and pushing the federal government to start allowing hemp seed imports.

Where do we stand on all this? The same as we do on many issues: We feel it best to have an honest discussion about what's involved, acknowledging that prohibition of marijuana may not be in our national interest anymore. Which means opening up such talks beyond state levels and into the halls of Congress... maybe by next 4/20, as a cool start date.

Better to face the challenges that any drug involves — including alcohol, tobacco and painkillers — than pretend it doesn't exist, or opening up the ethical slippery slopes involved in situations where over half our population is breaking laws in some way. And better, too, to look at how other societies that have experimented with legalization for decades, such as Holland, have been able to move beyond the binge mentalities implied in a term like 4/20.

As we like to say here, we can all do better than what is, now.


Speaking of the law, and crimes, we've been keeping an eye on the Kingston trial of Ellenville resident Sarra Gilbert, who has pled not guilty to second degree murder charges tied to the brutal death of her mother last year based on mental disease or defect.

The details that have emerged have been mind-boggling, from hundreds of stab wounds and attempts at decapitation based on the assumption that the late Mari Gilbert was an "evil god" to questions about the limits of a cogent mind facing charges of calculation and plotting.

In the end, we'll wait to do something on how such tragedies occur in a community, and what we can do, and actually get done, trying to work with our minds' innate fragility. That's what weekly newspapers are about.



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