What do you call your herb?
Pot? Weed? Bud? The chronic? Sticky icky? Or maybe you use the most common everyday term: marijuana. After all, our state has the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program, not the Oregon Medical Dank-Kind-Nugs Program.
But there’s a growing movement to phase out the word “marijuana” and replace it with “cannabis.” And there’s some important history that makes a case for doing so.
Let’s start with how common the word “marijuana” is. Until recently, the full title of this column was “Cannabuzz: The Week in Marijuana.” But last month, I attended a meeting for the Oregon Growers Association, and one of the speakers said the term; an audience member corrected her by shouting out “Cannabis!” The speaker immediately made her mea culpas, saying, “Sorry, of course—cannabis, not marijuana.”
Okay, but why not marijuana?
Cannabis is the scientific Latin botanical term, but I don’t get stoned so I can worry about all the rules. I don’t give a rat’s fucking ass what anybody calls it. If anybody wants some from somebody, all they have to do is call it something so that people know what the fuck they’re talking about.
If nobody cares about the proper use of English for the word marriage, then why should it matter what anybody calls grass?
In Havvai’i, I’ve heard it called, “Mahone” and “Killers”. If tax and regulating Marijuana means cracking down on free speech and enforcing political so-called, correctness, just fuck off. Smoke with parents, asks the Merc pole. Don’t be asinine. Who the fuck would want to go on a bum trip like that? It’s like the marketing department is trying to increase consumers. Just fuck off again. You know, it use to be cool to get stoned, and it still is, as long as nobody reads the stupid fucking Merc.