Complicated Reality

Before we learned to write with more permanent marks,

we were growing bud and plucking it and lighting it with sparks,

in the dark, in the day, we were puffin on the grasses

we planted it and planned to get lit off our asses.

Then five thousand years passed, maybe even more than that

and some bastard plans were hatched by some real scumbags

Puritanical panic made popular by headlines

written by a paper pusher clinching on his dimes.

See hemp is fucking great, we've known it from the start

You can make it into paper, you can smoke it and make art.

Those two peculiar properties earned it a spot upon a blacklist

by a bootlicking billionaire and a floundering fascist.

They started a campaign to say the devil grew the lettuce

then used it to excuse the violence they relied on to upset us.

They arrested activists, and planted bags on innocents,

they swelled the jails and built an empire on pot convictions

They even changed the name to spice up all the drama,

Instead of cannabis and hemp? They say Mexi-marijuana!

They blame it on the immigrants, and say it makes them crazy

with stories of rampages and lives wasted high and lazy.

They handed out life sentences for a little bit of shrubbery

and acted like they've saved the day with state-coordinated thuggery.

It took 13 years to kick the liquor prohibition

It's taken 4 generations to reconsider pot's position.

The hippies knew the truth, they kept the culture going

but now we're wising up, and finding science in the growing.

The tide for change is rising, and isn't it surprising

how the folks who fought the smoke now toke a pen for their arthritis?

I'd say it's all behind us, but we should not forget,

there's a lot of people behind bars for getting lit.

We aren't helping anybody by keeping stoners locked away

and it'll take more than a pot store to call it a better day.

We need to end the laws that let the racists and the rich

get away with slavery, and we need to do it quick.

Then we need to take a look at the neighborhoods they raided

and invest in the communities we let them devastate.

We need to let the lab rats find out what's going on

when grandma's cancer stays at bay because she hits a bong.

And we need to teach our college kids that pills and bottles are a joke

when their friends and them could fill a dorm room with some smoke.

We've got it, we should learn from it, it hurts us to deny it,

So roll one up and burn a bit, and help a newbie try it?