Massachusetts, high as a friggin' kite

Photo by Umut YILMAN on Unsplash

By Felix Carroll

A point that might be impossible to overstate is that, come July 1, 2018, when recreational marijuana sales become legal in Massachusetts, our commonwealth will be populated by a lot of people high as a friggin’ kite.

July 1, you, me, us — we’re going to be enticed to get stoned. 

Together. Legally.

Maybe that sounds fun to you, but I’d like to suggest that we as a commonwealth are not built for this. We’re going to be the state that can’t handle its weed. We’re going to be the state that smokes pot and becomes super paranoid. 

We’re not California. We’re not Washington or Oregon, Colorado or Nevada. Those states can be super stoned and no one would know the difference. 

We’re Massachusetts. From our colonial beginnings, we as a people have seen to it that things get done, and no one gets anything done that’s useful when they’re recreationally stoned — aside from jazz musicians and house painters. 

From our founding as a colony, when the pilgrims landed upon these shores, what’s the very first thing they did? Laundry. It’s right there in Governor William Bradford’s journal. They didn’t set up the badminton net, like Coloradoans would’ve done. They boiled water on the beach and washed their clothing.

This is who we are as a people: tediously responsible, excruciatingly conscientious.

Whose idea was the American Revolution? Ours. The first flag of the United American Colonies was raised here. The American industrial revolution began here. The first computer was built here. What else?Marshmallow Fluff was invented here. 

You think we accomplished all this while smoking pot? No, we did it drinking hard cider at first, then beer. I mean — we did it working hard, followed by somemoderate drinking followed by a good night’s rest.

We don’t mess around. We cure diseases. We educate the world. We have the highest rate in the nation of residents with health insurance. We have the nation’s lowest divorce rate. We’ve got our acts together, cinched tightly and dead-bolted. 

Does this sound conducive to recreational pot use?

The temptation is understandable. You’re looking at this nation, and you’re seeing all of the commonwealth’s good works — our centuries-long pursuit of knowledge and truth, our insistence upon civility in the public square and faithfulness to the social contract, our historical humility among peers and under God — all being summarily undermined by this hack we have for a president and his merry band of fellow parolees. And now there’s that guy in Alabama who likes cowboy hats and little girls and hates immigrants and gays who will undoubtedly carry the “Christian vote.”

You’re saying to yourselves, “Dear Lord, I will never laugh again, ever, because this is all really, really horrifying.”

And then you go onto your Instagram feed and you see your friends from high school now out in Oregon, and they’re belly laughing about something. You watch their video. They’ve put a cat onto a piano, and the cat is pounding up and down the keys chasing a beam from a laser pointer, and you’re thinking, “Amusing, but not belly-laugh funny.” 

But then you remember, recreational pot sales are legal in Oregon, and your friends from way back are high as friggin’ kites. They’re out there having fun, and you’re stuck in Massachusetts upholding civilization itself. 

One by one, the other states you’ve counted on for intellectual and emotional ballast are now high as friggin kites at a time when we need them most.

And here’s what else you’re thinking: “I just want to be able to laugh again, too.”

But collectively speaking, pot won’t work that way for us. We weren’t put on this earth to make funny cat videos. We were made to awake in a Listerine panic and shove off to work to save the world.

Mark my word, this is how it’s going to go on July 1: Someone’s going to roll a big fat one, and we’re going to pass it around. But unlike those states out West where there’s plenty of room to be weird, we’re in New England, hemmed in by a bunch of busybodies, like the state of Maine, for instance. 

Sure enough, one of us is going to say something super stoned like, “Geez, you ever think about all those lighthouses in Maine — does anyone even live in them?”

And everyone else is going to just confusedly stare at that person, afraid to respond because whatever they say would sound super stoned, too. And Maine is going to shake its head in disgust. And New Hampshire is going to cackle at us from the balcony because that’s what New Hampshire does — it cackles from the nation’s balcony like a crazy person. 

And then there will be Vermont, which will likely be illegally stoned on July 1, peering at us from behind its kitchen curtains. 

The joint still being passed around, one of us will finally summon the courage to say something like, “Rhode Island has lighthouses, doesn’t it?”

And the rest of us who had never considered the possibility of Rhode Island having lighthouses will retreat deeper into ourselves and probably begin sweating profusely as the cannabis starts doing a number on our brain’s fear-processing center.

Silent, destructive battles will be waged in each one of us as we’ll wonder how we’ve gone this far through life never having considered the obvious fact that, of course, Rhode Island has lighthouses! And we’ll quietly question ourselves about all the other super obvious realities that escaped our attention up until cannabis legally entered our bloodstream. 

“So, wait a minute,” you’ll think to yourself, “if Rhode Island has lighthouses, does that mean —”

You don’t want to think about it, but you won’t be able to stop yourself.

“— does that mean Connecticut has lighthouses, too?”

I’m telling you: We, collectively, as a commonwealth, won’t do well on weed. It will cripple us.

Let Maine smoke pot recreationally. They’re not doing anything.

We in Massachusetts have shit to do. We have diseases to cure. We’ve got a civilization to save. And at the end of a hard-working day, we’ll have a beer or two, right? Just like always. What do you say? We’ll have you back in bed by 8:30 to dream your restless dreams of Governor William Bradford hollering for more tinder, more tinder, please. Keep the fires burning.