Chapter Fourteen - Smoke Signals

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Smoke Signals

WEED IS OLDER than your country.
Older than your politics.
Older than your church.
Older than your outrage.
Older than your wellness routine.

It’s been medicine, magic, and a menace.
It’s been blessed, banned, burned, bottled, branded, and sold.

It never asked for any of it.

We gave it those meanings.
We told the stories.
We lit the fire and decided what the smoke meant.

And for all the arguments, laws, and shifts in public opinion, the plant hasn’t really changed.

We have.

We’ve turned it into a monster.
Then a joke.
Then a product.
Then a “solution.”
And maybe, someday, just a plant again.

But in the meantime?

It’s still out there.
Growing wild.
Thriving in cracks.
Waiting in the dirt.
Doing what it’s always done.

Whether we call it sacred or stupid.
Whether we tax it, fear it, mock it, or build our startups on it.

Cannabis doesn't care what we think it is.

But maybe we should.

The fear, profit, punishment, and healing we’ve projected onto it isn’t about weed.

It’s about us.

So what do we do with power like that?

Do we smoke it?
Do we regulate it?
Do we ignore it?
Do we heal with it?
Do we destroy lives over it?
Do we finally tell the truth about it?

Or do we just light up, look around, and ask better questions?

That part’s up to you.

The smoke is rising either way.