Dear editor:
I go on many long walks, where I frequently encounter dogs, behind fences, who bark furiously at me. I always tell them, mostly for my amusement, "Nobody cares what you think."
Clair McFarland's marijuana article reminds me of those dogs. Clair got a lot of opinions from state legislators about why they oppose any kind marijuana reform, but what she didn't get was any of those legislators talking about what the people of Wyoming want.
In 2020, a poll by University of Wyoming found 54% support for full-legalization and 85% support for medical-marijuana.
In 2023, almost 50,000 voters signed petitions to get full-legalization on the ballot.
But Clair's article is full of legislators spouting THEIR anti-marijuana opinions. It's like they forgot that their job is to enact the will of the people, so long ago, that they don't even pretend to care what WE think anymore.
The article is a closed loop. Everyone quoted agrees that marijuana reform is bad, dangerous, un-Wyoming, and “what they do in Colorado.”
What’s missing is any evidence that public opinion even entered the room.
That omission is not accidental. It’s the point. They don't care what we think, and they want us to know that they don't care what we want.
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus set up legalization as a straw man, poked it with old rusty pitchforks of arguments made obsolete by decades of widespread legalization, and lit it on fire with fear-mongering "Keep out the Greenies" slogans from the previous century.
Do sheriffs want to waste time on this, and courts? Would it help small business startups? What about bars and taverns selling it like package liquor?
What about just allowing medical-use to be an affirmative-defense to possession? Nobody knows, because nobody is even asking.
Nobody cares what anybody outside the Freedom Caucus thinks.
Frederick Douglass said power concedes nothing without a demand. That's repression and oppression. They want to exhaust us, by making us fight for every square-inch of freedom and liberty.
The article proves this by accident. Read the quotes again. Not one official asks what voters want.
Not one wonders why enforcement resources are being wasted. Not one acknowledges the lived reality of Wyomingites who already use cannabis regularly. We're not citizens, we're not even subjects, we're just fenced dogs barking.
The Freedom Caucus can't hear us, as they march past, headphones blaring Yankee Doodle at full-volume in their ears.
Sincerely,
Gina Douglas, Casper
