Has Rolla gone to pot?

By Daniel A. Jones | Rolla City Council | Ward 1

Medical marijuana buffer ordinances, medical marijuana dispensaries, marijuana decriminalization movements. Marijuana talk is everywhere! Has Rolla gone to pot? All of this talk of marijuana has a lot of people in Rolla wondering…where are we headed?

I’m going to try and answer that question from my perspective.

First, before I talk about where we are headed, I want to talk about where we stand.

Here in Rolla, we have a few financial and social shortcomings. Our downtown needs some serious revitalization, we need another fire station, our trash trucks need updated, our jails are over populated, our animal shelter is a shack on it’s last leg, and let’s not forget, we don’t have enough police on our streets to battle this nasty opioid epidemic we have found ourselves in.

It sounds like we are in need of new ideas and new revenue streams.

Then along came Amendment 2. With Amendment 2 Missouri overwhelmingly ushered in a brand new industry.

Medical marijuana is here, and it is here to stay. That being said, how do we make the most of it for our community?

The first thing we need to do as a community is release our fears. A bit of apprehension makes sense. After all, marijuana is a drug. I’m talking about a different brand of fear. The fear built from decades of debunked stigma and untruths spread to boost the pharmaceutical industry. Rolla citizens are smarter than that. Marijuana has become more socially accepted as a non-toxic plant-based medicine, put on earth to help.

We aren’t becoming Denver, or San Francisco, or any version of that. We are becoming a newer and better Rolla.

We are embracing change and understanding that with it comes healing and new ideas. We are a community of compassion. We don’t want to keep building on the lies that come with unjust marijuana prohibition. We don’t want to keep locking our citizens up for small amounts of cannabis. We want our medicine without unneeded buffers and obstacles. We don’t need undue restrictions put in place by folks who won’t even learn what medical marijuana is about. We are better than that.

We aren’t going to start doing mushrooms and dancing wildly in the streets. We aren’t going to start growing marijuana in every park. We simply want the medicine we voted in and we don’t want over prosecution of a social norm that doesn’t deserve this unfair prohibition.

So, has Rolla gone to pot? I don’t believe so. Our community sees these changes for what they are. Sensible drug law and wonderful access to new medicine, a drop in opioid overdoses and deaths, revenue to fund our police and fire, fewer arrests for a plant we all know isn’t out to get us, and check it out, it finally has us talking about something in Rolla besides sidewalks and the Centre’s financial woes.

In my humble opinion, Rolla hasn’t gone to pot. Rolla has gone the way of sensibility. We have found strength in not being a hateful and untruthful community, but a community built on standards and honesty and healthy living. We have entered a new stage in our growth. Rolla hasn’t gone to pot, pot has come to Rolla. And it brings much-needed relief and answers.