They Legalized It and Forgot to Open the Cells

David Peel — Street Corner Rant

I wrote a song in 1968 called "I Like Marijuana." Played it in Washington Square Park. The cops came. They always came. Not for the music — for the message. You couldn't say the word marijuana on a street corner in 1968 without getting a nightstick in your ribs.

John Sinclair got ten years for two joints. Ten years. In a cage. For a plant.

Now it's 2026 and you can walk into a dispensary on Broadway and buy a pre-rolled joint with a receipt. A corporation grew it, a marketing team named it, and a cashier rings it up like it's a pack of gum.

And nobody said sorry.

Nobody went back to the cells and said, "Hey, remember when we ruined your life for doing what's now a business? Our mistake." The people who got locked up are still locked up. Or they're out with a record that follows them everywhere — can't get a job, can't get an apartment, can't vote in some states.

They made it legal and turned it into a billion-dollar industry. And the people who fought for it? The people who went to jail for it? They didn't get a dispensary. They got a felony.

That's not legalization. That's gentrification of a plant.

David Peel

See also: Have a Marijuana — the 1968 Elektra album. Singing about pot when it could get you ten years. The Pope Smokes Dope — Lennon produced it, every station banned it. Forty Pages — the FBI opened a file because of the singing. The Dispensary — fifty years to the cash register. The Same Word — truth and victory are interchangeable if you wait long enough. The Vote — Texas voted eighty percent yes. Four out of five people agree with the corner.

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