My Mom Secretly Made Pot Brownies For AIDS Patients And It Changed My Life

[Nevilledog]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hiv-aids-weed-edibles_n_5f204df8c5b69fd473126e39

A family of deer exploded out of the forest. I must have been 6, squatting in the dirt driveway with my model horses as the animals dodged around me, eyes bulging. Then a helicopter emerged from behind the trees, its body like a giant insect, loud as a machine gun. It hovered low overhead, sending debris whirling into my face. My mom rushed out of the house and pulled me close to her body. The chopper moved on toward the next ranch.

The Campaign Against Marijuana Planting was a creature of the Reagan Administration. Launched in 1983, CAMP employed disused military equipment — U-2 spy planes, infrared cameras, flash-bang grenades, and battering rams — to hunt marijuana growers in California. Over the years, this equipment would increasingly be mobilized against urban communities of color throughout the United States. Reagan fired some of the first experimental salvos in his war on drugs against rural pot growers in his home state.

Every month, my mom loaded our Datsun hatchback with home-baked cannabis brownies and drove three hours to San Francisco. My dad was often out of work and we never had much money; this was how we survived. The sale of any amount of marijuana was a felony in those days. But like many hippies, my parents saw the plant as wholesome — a gift from Mother Earth.

Our town was part of the tri-county area nicknamed the “Emerald Triangle” for the potent sinsemilla grown in the hills. I’m sure I wasn’t the only kid at my Waldorf school whose parents had to check her sweater for pot leaves before school. I learned to lie to protect my family before I could spell my own name.

*snip*

[Laelth]

1. Great story. k&r n/t

-Laelth

[Thunderbeast]

2. And to think...

My local budtender offers a senior discount!

HOODATHUNK?

[msongs]

3. drug peddler family values from huffpo nt

[USALiberal]

4. What????? nt

[AmyStrange]

5. Ha ha ha

-

you're a nut, right?

ETA: (from the article) "Our secret was a kind of enchantment, a magic spell. I grew up in a vibrant world that could only exist if it remained invisible. This defined my childhood. Some family secrets must be terrible to carry — fraught with deceit and shame. My burden was made lighter by openness at home. No topic was taboo between my mom and me. Even as our secret distanced me from outsiders, it made us closer, creating an intimate, trusting mother-daughter bond that persists to this day."
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