In South Dakota, I am hard at work with Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Students For Liberty in order to educate others in truthful marijuana and drug education. Specifically, I am working to bring medical marijuana to the state of South Dakota. This is a very new endeavor that is starting in South Dakota, and I think that with some hard work of activists throughout the state, medical marijuana could be a possibility in South Dakota.
However in my work on campus, on social media, and around town, I am constantly told that I am wasting my time. I am sure there are many veteran drug reformers reading that have heard this before. You have probably been told that your pursuit is useless and medical marijuana will never be legalized. But that isn’t what I am told at all. Actually, I am told almost exactly the opposite, but with the same conclusion.
I am told that medical and recreational marijuana legalization is inevitable, and I am wasting my time for promoting it. Like seriously? Medical and recreational marijuana legalization is inevitable? That doesn’t make any sense!
If people were to stop working on legalization efforts, how would it get passed? There is no one pushing it, and this is really dangerous talk! This is talk that will get into the head of legalization supporters, and then completely stall us.
In fact, this was a discussion point at last year’s Students for Sensible Drug Policy Conference, and it is a super exciting discussion point to have. I don’t think there are a lot of drug reformers around that would have thought that they would be warning people to not think that marijuana legalization is inevitable. So this is certainly a good and bad problem to have.
Something important to keep in mind is that drug reform efforts will never end, per se. Even after we have legalized marijuana, our job goes from being reformers to being conservatives. After that point we must conserve what we have won and fought for because there will always be people around trying to take that liberty away. Plus, we haven’t gotten there yet! There still needs to be leaders and reformers around to actually end marijuana prohibition! It won’t just do it itself.
