Last week, Rep. Cindy Acree nearly made Colorado a more dangerous place for children. Protect kids, she said: ban the MMJ edibles industry. Make your own edibles, she told sick patients. In the ensuing uproar, everyone overlooked what this would actually mean for children.
If you make something in your own kitchen, you use your own containers.
A medicated cookie in Mom’s cookie jar is a lot more insidious than one in its own pre-labeled packaging. Especially if you’re eight, and pretty good at swiping cookies from the jar. Or especially if Dad packed your lunch today. (Oops.)
For sticky fingers, a baker’s dozen is easier to pilfer from than an individually-packaged product. And unless your kitchen equipment includes an industrial label-maker, you wouldn’t stamp each batch with ingredients, potency, and handy notes-to-self about what not to do (give it to children; operate machinery)—all the information typed on a typical Colorado edible today.
Hours after trying to replace labeled edibles with unlabeled edibles, Rep. Acree changed her goal: she demands labeled edibles. Her ‘misleading edibles’ had been exposed as a printed T-shirt graphic (never made into food) and an already-banned California product. The maligned MMJ industry was tempted put some labels on Ms. Acree herself.
It’s natural, says the Buddha, to label someone—especially someone who threatens your well-being or livelihood. You label constantly: people, experiences, yourself. It’s nothing against you—labeling is part of your complex human brain, a survival adaptation. But some labels (“good”, “pleasant”) cause attachment; others (“unpleasant”, “clueless”) cause aversion. And attachment and aversion, says the Buddha, cause your suffering.
Acree, the budtender interrupts, is the one causing suffering. She started it. So how can we stop labeling her?
Just notice, says the Buddha. Look at your mind’s tendency to label. You’ll notice something odd: what you judge in others is in you, too.
Cindy Acree is just like you. She, too, suffers from attachment—especially attachment to image (another kind of label). According to the statement on her business’s homepage, “the image your name projects defines who you are.” So she recently worked hard for a new image: protector of children.
But Acree’s suffering doesn’t stop there. She’s attached to multiple images: protector of children, protector of trademarks (she named her company “Protektmark”); protector of big business.
Acree proves that these images aren’t mutually-exclusive. While discussing her child-protecting legislation, she told Westword “I’m shocked you haven’t seen General Mills or Post or any of these manufacturers down here talking about trademark violations.”
Finally, someone’s sticking up for General Mills and Post. It’s like sticking up for kids—as long as you don’t care about the obese ones. At the hearing, Acree displayed their sugary cereal (along with Mountain Dew, another pillar of child-friendly staples).
No one mentioned the epidemic of childhood obesity/diabetes caused by such products and their child-geared marketing. Acree condemned MMJ’s marketing, but not pharmaceuticals’ prime-time lullabies. She called for labeling laws, ignoring years of public outcry for labels on the genetically-modified foods that anonymously fill American supermarkets.
Sure, you could label her. But she’s just like you, says the Buddha. She looks out for her livelihood.
And to promote her livelihood, she shouldn’t provoke those industries. She’s President and C.E.O of a company that helps businesses profit using Intellectual Property law. And food/pharma-corporations are Intellectual Property law’s biggest fans. They often use IP laws to pocket profits owed to indigenous communities—or plant-based medicine cultures. (For more on biopiracy, click here. For an example, the neem tree—the same neem you organic growers use on pests—once yielded profits for a few corporations only, thanks to IP laws, despite Indians’ centuries of medicinal and agricultural uses so universal that they even call the neem tree “the village dispensary.”)
Since MMJ is a plant-based medicine culture itself, you could jump to all sorts of conclusions here. But you’re mindful, says the Buddha: you don’t have to follow all your thoughts. Maybe you want to call someone a “hypocrite,” but your blog warns against using labels while hypocritically using one (“Republican”) right in the title. Maybe you’re tempted to judge a public official for lacking ethical code, but—
The Buddha clears his throat, stepping away from the budtender. Part of his Eightfold Path—“Right Livelihood”—discourages (in one translation) selling consciousness-altering drugs. So much for a unified ethical code. The budtender shrugs, ignoring the irony.
Thankfully, Rep. Acree wasn’t so stubborn. She reversed her position within hours. She’s now working on MMJ labeling laws (which the Dept. of Revenue has already been fine-tuning for months).
Labels on edibles protect patients and children. One day, labeling laws could even protect edible companies (from allegations about their extraction processes—another factor behind the recent name-calling.)
Has this political charade helped children? Maybe it helped the child in us all, who benefits from a conversation about labeling: labeling food and labeling each other.
