Strawberry fields forever?

Sonomans celebrated April 20 – marijuana day – with the opening of the first cannabis dispensary in town. It was quite a rush.

The bright new storefront, a remodeled Italian restaurant on Sonoma Highway, was chock full of colorfully labelled jars, bottles and packets, all at a 30 percent discount – and the din of excited shoppers of all ages seeking supplies of the herbal medicine now known to be effective for management of pain, insomnia, cancer and other medical conditions.

Once considered an evil narcotic, and still illegal according to the federal government, cannabis is now widely accepted as a health aid. A recent study by Johns Hopkins Medicine reported that people using cannabis for medical purposes report less pain, better sleep, reduced anxiety, less need for health care resources and a better overall quality of life.

Cannabis is now available in soft drinks, lotions and a host of other products in weakened concentration at various outlets including Safeway.

But the products at SPARC and similar dispensaries are available in much stronger concentrations, some of them not just for medical conditions but to get high, and the high still has some people leery of its use.

It took years for the City Council to approve an application for a store. Yet in 2015, one of the retirement homes actually hosted a presentation by a doctor who recommended that cannabis was good medicine for people of a certain age. I wrote about the event for the Sonoma Sun.

Many of us oldies remember the days when you bought your pot in a paper bag or plastic baggies direct from the farm. Sonoma County was ahead of the curve. Back in the day when pot was considered an evil drug, pot growers headed to Sonoma County to grow, and sell, the illegal weed. Some growers got busted and sent to jail.

That was fifty years ago!

Has cannabis changed the world?

Some thought that mind-altering LSD would bring peace and love to all, especially if it was inserted into the water supply. Now psychedelics are being used therapeutically for people struggling with terminal illness.

But alas, although the consciousness-altering powers of marijuana were well known and sought after, especially by the young, its use has not transformed our culture.

We still don’t have peace

The counter-culture that emerged during the Sixties in opposition to the Vietnam War and the draft did have a profound effect. A whole field of alternative health emerged, based on a holistic understanding of how the body works as a whole. Holistic medicine is related to the understanding of the ecology of the environment, which in turn led to renewed appreciation of the natural world and the way we are interconnected with all beings, both human and not. The more mechanistic, materialistic view of the world that had prevailed into the 50s was found to be inadequate. Systems theory provided a better framework.

The promise of the counter-culture was that we were entering a New Age of expanded awareness, loving consciousness, and even bliss. From early psychedelic experiences people moved into an exploration of Eastern religions and indigenous culture.

Books could be written about all this and have. But the younger generation – our kids and grandkids – is not too impressed with the changes wrought by the revolution in consciousness that their parents espoused. Some of them say the 60s failed. That it was just a party, a hedonistic experience without substance. A fantasy.

The state of the world today is certainly not reassuring. Extinction has become a common word, apocalypse an ordinary concept. Now we have a bloody war. Humanity can’t seem to get a grip on the life-threatening issues that assail us today. The end of the world appears to be in sight.

Sixty years down the road, and more for some of us, at least we have some high-quality cannabis to soothe our pain. Legal, if not exactly cheap.

Maybe this moment is just an interlude. Maybe the answers will come.