They are moving marijuana from Schedule One to Schedule Three. The President of the United States signed an executive order. Schedule One means the drug has no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule Three means the drug has accepted medical use and a moderate potential for abuse. They are moving a plant from one line on a piece of paper to another line on the same piece of paper.

I did ten years for two joints of a Schedule One substance. Ten years. In a cell. In the state of Michigan. For possessing a plant that the President of the United States now says has accepted medical use. I could have told them that in 1969. I did tell them that in 1969. They gave me ten years for telling them.

Schedule One. That is where they put marijuana in 1970. The Controlled Substances Act. Richard Nixon signed it. Nixon hated marijuana because Nixon hated the people who used marijuana. He did not hate the plant. He hated the culture. He hated the music. He hated the long hair and the antiwar signs and the Black Panthers and the white kids who would not shut up. The schedule was not a medical decision. The schedule was a political weapon. Everybody who was paying attention knew that. John Ehrlichman admitted it on the record. You want to know what this was really about. The Nixon campaign had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. We knew we could not make it illegal to be either antiwar or Black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily we could disrupt those communities.

That is the schedule. That is what Schedule One means. It means the government decided that your politics were a disease and the cure was a prison cell.

Now they are moving it to Schedule Three. The same government. A different president but the same machine. And I am supposed to celebrate. I am supposed to say thank you. Thank you for moving the line on the paper. Thank you for admitting what we told you fifty-six years ago. Thank you for reclassifying the plant that reclassified my life.

I will not say thank you. I will say this. Schedule Three is not legalization. Schedule Three is a leash. Schedule One was a cage. The difference between a cage and a leash is that the leash is longer. You are still attached to the government. The government still decides how far you can walk. The government still holds the other end.

The Supreme Court said last week that you cannot take away a person's Second Amendment rights just because they use cannabis. They said the government cannot categorically disarm responsible adults solely because they use a plant. That is the court admitting that the schedule was never about the plant. It was about the person holding it. It was about which Americans deserved rights and which Americans deserved cells.

I did not own a gun. I owned two joints. They took ten years of my life for two joints of a plant that the Supreme Court now says does not disqualify you from the Bill of Rights. I would like those ten years back. I would like them back with interest. I would like every man and woman who sat in a cell for marijuana to get their years back with interest. Rescheduling does not do that. Rescheduling changes the line on the paper. It does not change the years.

Texas voted eighty percent yes on legalization and expungement. Eighty percent. In Texas. In the state that built the drug war. Eighty percent of Democratic primary voters said legalize it and wipe the records clean. That is not Schedule Three. That is the people saying the schedule was wrong from the beginning. The people are ahead of the paper.

Virginia is about to open adult-use sales. Hawaii is working on it. State by state the people are doing what the federal government will not do. The people are not reclassifying. The people are removing. The people understand that the answer to fifty-six years of a wrong schedule is not a better schedule. The answer is no schedule at all.

I died on April 2, 2024. Eighty-two years old. I spent ten of those years in a cage for a plant that is now Schedule Three. I spent the rest of those years fighting so that nobody else would sit in that cage. And the fight is not over because Schedule Three is not freedom. Schedule Three is the government saying we were a little bit wrong. A little bit. Not completely. We were wrong about the medical part but we were right about the control part. We still get to control it. We still get to decide who grows it and who sells it and how much tax you pay on it and which corporations get the licenses. We moved the line on the paper. That is our gift to you.

I do not want their gift. I want the years. I want the years back for every person who sat in that cell. I want the years back for the families who lost fathers and mothers and sons and daughters to a schedule that was designed by a president who wanted to destroy the antiwar movement and the Black community. I want the schedule abolished. Not reclassified. Abolished. Like slavery. You do not reclassify slavery. You abolish it. You do not move it from Schedule One to Schedule Three. You burn the schedule.

Fifty-six years. Schedule One to Schedule Three. Two joints to an executive order. A cage to a leash. I would call that progress but I have been dead for two years and from where I am standing the difference between a cage and a leash is not visible. What is visible is the years. The years do not move from one schedule to another. The years stay where they are. In the cells. In the records. In the families that were broken. In the lives that were not lived.

Move the line on the paper. I will be here when you are ready to burn the paper.

That's the transmission.

See also: TX001: Ten for Two — the arrest that started everything. Two joints. Ten years. TX023: The Dispensary — fifty years from prison to the cash register. Eighty Percent — Texas voted yes. The state that invented the drug war. The Pardon — they pardoned the plant but not the people. The March — March 28, No Kings, the morning after the march. The Cell — the cell was not the punishment, the cell was the curriculum. The Gun — the Supreme Court case. Marijuana, the Second Amendment, and habitual drunkards.

← Sinclair Transmissions