Editor’s note: This letter was written in response to the Ruhge’s letter, which Bacca received via email along with the Sun.
I am unsure why you have sent me this message, I strongly disagree with your stance and rhetoric. First, I would encourage you to do a little bit of scientific research, so you understand how your indignation is not just off base and “stupid” (as you would put it), it is uneducated (as I would put it). Your ignorant commentary, however, is dangerous to people like me. I am a “stoner.”
For the last 15 years of my life I have lived with Crohn’s Disease. It’s excruciatingly painful and treated with some pretty hardcore drugs that cause unbearable side effects at best and terminal cancer at worst. I have spent a cumulative four years or more starving nearly to death before my intestinal blockages were surgically removed. I now live with just 3 of my original 5 feet of colon. I use cannabis (every single day), a strict diet, and exercise to control my Crohn’s today. Without cannabis, I do not believe I would have been able to achieve anything, let alone two degrees, editing/writing credits on six books and hundreds of articles, or the ability to travel the world and live my life. You will not convince me or the majority of Lompoc citizens that you are right and we all are wrong, so many of us live this reality every day.
Marijuana is already all around you in Lompoc. I bet half your neighbors have had stashes and smoked it daily before Proposition 64 or 215 ever passed. I know Lompocians in every neighborhood then and now who do. It’s time to deal in reality. Allowing the ordinance to stand would bring in jobs, revenue, new business and make good, clean, and safe product readily available for people like me.
Stop standing in the way of progress; you are hurting people like me. You are perpetuating the dangerous black market and wasting taxpayers’ money and time trying to prevent change. If you don’t believe me, I am happy to introduce you to medical professionals, researchers, or anyone else who is a trained expert in their field to speak facts to any of this fear mongering. Just let me know, I have some excellent contacts I am happy to share. I would like to believe you are just unexposed and not being willfully ignorant to the detriment of people like me.
Finally, I find your rhetoric about “stupidity” and “stoners” to be beyond offensive and a cheap appeal, or dog whistle, to the sorts of culture wars that oppress minority groups and complicate serious dialogue at all levels. This is nothing new, cannabis prohibition and the war on drugs are firmly rooted in racist appeals: the anti-Mexican and black sentiment of William Randolph Hearst and Harry Anslinger led to the start of Prohibition, and by former President Richard Nixon’s own admission, the Controlled Substances Act and further anti-drug legislation was designed to oppress minority groups.
This article appears in Dec 14-21, 2017.
