Hysterical Headlines (Funny or Absurd) for February 13th
Bottom Line: These are the daily doses of nonsense in the media and my hot takes on them...
Dad who pushed for medical marijuana seethes at delays that make disabled daughter’s life harder - Miami Herald
Excerpt: When Seth Hyman first began to buy medical marijuana in Florida for his 12-year-old daughter last year, he hoped it would be the answer to fixing her life-threatening seizures. Months after the legislature passed a law enacting a constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana, patients say they are hampered by delayed regulations yet to be implemented by state health officials. The Department of Health’s Office of Medical Marijuana Use, which is tasked with devising and implementing rules to implement the law, has blamed administrative challenges and lawsuits for the delays.
Hot Take: It's unfortunate but predictable that a tragic condition of a 12-year-old girl is being used to sensationalize and further politicize medical marijuana in Florida. First let's address the structural issue with this story. There's nothing about the process at the state that makes anyone's life harder. The condition makes one's life harder and if the amendment hadn't passed this wouldn't even be a conversation. Most notably, the issue gets back to the inconvenient truth that medical marijuana still isn't legal. Florida's deal with the challenges that come with doing something at the state level that violates federal law. When you're already violating federal law it's a tangled web to operate what would technically be a state-sanctioned marijuana trafficking ring.
This is why I stated for as long as I can recall that if you want legal marijuana in any form you should take the debate to the federal level. Until and unless it's legal nationally - it's illegal everywhere. The only question is if the law is enforced and for those at the state you might imagine it's a complicated process to streamline federal drug trafficking.
Black With (Some) White Privilege Anna Holmes, New York Times
Hot Take: If you're wondering what black with some white privilege means... It means that you have a black and a white parent. So now we're into the level of blackness to determine one's percentage of "white privilege". How long before Ancestry and 23 and Me become used for determining the specific percentage of white privilege or victimization as the case may be? Now, growing up in Georgia, predominantly suburban Atlanta, I learned of the cultural differences with "black communities". I was informed that discrimination against those with the darkest skin was often common among African-Americans. That was long before the modern-day "white-privilege" narrative had been advanced throughout society and educational establishments. With that point of reference in mind I'm not surprised to see that the perceived level of blackness matters to those attempting to size up the proper amount of victimization that one's subjected to by virtue of who they are...
I'm just hoping that one of these days/weeks/months/years - we might be able to collectively do something Dr. King mentioned many moons ago. Wouldn't it be nice if we could generally judge people on the basis of their character rather than their perceived percentage of whiteness or blackness? One can dream right?
Hot Take: Yeah, I'm inclined to agree... Coin racism is a new one.
Until tomorrow...