What if Narendra Modi was pro marijuana! Ever imagined?

I am sure Seth Rogen would be forgiving toward my borrowing of this piece from his movie 'Pineapple Express', “If marijuana is not made legal within the next five years I have no faith in humanity, period. Everyone likes smoking weed. They have, for thousands of years. They're not going to stop anytime soon. It makes everything better. Makes food taste better. Makes music better. It makes sex feel better, for God's sakes. It makes shitty movies better, you know?”

While Mr Rogen might have said that in 2008, man's lineage to marijuana is over 5000 years old.

The earth became proud parents when the dear 20^th century was born. Racism fell from the high horses of grace. Sexism made an unsexy exit. Science and Technology became captains of the ship called 'future'. Bombs danced on the laps of political agendas, as the weaker nations were dressed to be depressed under the address of the sanction that geographical borderline disorders were indeed good for them.

While Yellow Journalism, in the first half of the century, took the cake for manipulating people with its white lies about the concepts of drugs, people, and war, which eventually turned out to be black, was orchestrated mainly to contain the Hispanic migration crisis, chasten the quality of equality in the profound segments of race and gender, and increase the wealth and jurisdiction of the law-making and imposing establishments - it was indeed, a man called Harry J. Anslinger, the first and foremost commissioner to the newly constituted Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) in 1930, who was responsible for the criminalisation and the fate that marijuana is to made to live with, today.

Backed by the Roosevelt administration, Mr Anslinger, the prophet who officially put marijuana behind the veil, joined hands with William Randolph Hearst, founder and owner of America's largest newspaper chain and an icon to American journalism, and went on a serial detonation spree of 'marihuana' (the aboriginal Mexican-Spanish attestation) like an atomic bomb in the vast networks of Hearst's newspapers proclaiming the “evils” of the “herbal demon” without a rhyme or a reason essentially linking its fame and notoriety to scapegoat the racial, ethnic, and social minorities.

“Marihuana influenced negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows, and look at a white woman twice.” - A Hearst Newspaper in 1935.

“Makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.” - Harry J Anslinger.

“Negro entertainers with their jazz and swing music are declared an outgrowth of marihuana use which possesses white women to tap their feet.” - Harry J Anslinger

In March 1961, under the administration of John F. Kennedy, Harry J. Asnlinger led the successful formation of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, an international treaty that codifies all existing treaties on drug control, including the cultivation of plants that were grown or caused to be part of raw material that came under the umbrella of narcotic drugs. Once signed, this convention also limits the manufacture, production, possession, use, trade, distribution, import and export of narcotic drugs, save for medical and scientific pursuits.

India, under the tenure of Jawaharlal Nehru, the nation's first prime minister, to honour its obligations with the Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, signed the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on 30 March, 1961. And on 13 December, 1964 the treaty was ratified. However, international treaties or conventions were not going to clip the wings of India's holistic connection with marijuana. Just not yet.

When Ronald Reagan became the 40^th US president, his administration began twisting the arm of Rajiv Gandhi to make marijuana illegal in India. Consequentially, in 1985, India established the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS). Before this act, India could and was able to practically dance in the open about its consumption or sale of marijuana.

54 years before we had successfully negotiated with and had finally managed to ask the British to leave us their alphabet and take their letters and go back to where they came from, they were pretty impressed with our deep-rooted weed economics. So in 1893, the British appointed a joint study called 'Indian Hemp Drugs Commission' concerning the growth, manufacture, consumption, and social-cultural impacts from the intake of marijuana in any form.

One year later, the conclusion set on top of a 3,281 page report, along with the testimony from almost 1,200 people belonging to diverse cultures, ethnicities, professions, builds, and mindset was - “moderate use of hemp drugs was practically attended by no evil results at all. The intake produces no injuries on the mind and there is no moral injury whatsoever.”

Now, this is how it works. Weed is not our family member. It is an outside guest. Let's call this guest Mary Jane for now. This guest can make or break our mood. Depending on how beautiful and powerful this guest is and how organised we are.

The power or the camaraderie of the guest is determined by the active agent called THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) that is present in the DNA of any self-respecting weed. The percentage of THC present in weed will ascertain the potency of the weed. The THC content in the weed available in India is between 3% and 35%, depending on the atmospheric conditions and locale of its genesis and growth. Synthetic or hybrid ones are set to contain up to 50% - 80% THC.

Mary Jane can make us feel different emotions based on where she touches us in the brain.

Our brains have neurotransmitters and receptors. The former sends messages. The latter receives them. Accordingly delegations are made to execute the desired movement or action. Now, if Mary Jane strikes us in the Amygdala, the receptor that regulates fear and anxiety, we are going to be scared or paranoid for something. If Mary Jane flirts with our Hypothalamus, receptors that regulate sexual behaviour and appetite, we will experience an increase in the appetite and feel aroused beyond our regular frame. And when Mary Jane caresses our spinal cord that is responsible for the transmission of information between body and brain, we will experience our pain sensitivities being altered – one of the reasons why marijuana is used as a pain suppressant or stress reliever.

We primarily have nine distinguished cannabinoid receptors in the brain. Very rarely weed strikes more than three receptors at the same time.

The 10^th Receptor
Strikes the masses. Rocks the social network. Critiques the critics. Impresses his suits with his own branding – Narendra Modi, a powerful friend to the microphones and warden of cutting-edge speeches about hope and development. On June 1, 2015, when speaking to the United News of India, Mr Modi remarked that our religious freedom is a constitutional right and is “non-negotiable”. He further vouches, “We stand for every one of the 1.25 billion Indians regardless of caste or creed and we will work for the progress of every one of them.”

Speaking of constitutional rights, Mr Modi, would it be possible to scooch in a ganja right? The right to smoke weed without inhibitions? Peter Tosh will be happy to be reincarnated just to come down and sing to you:
Legalize it
Don't criticize it
Legalize it, yeah, yeah,
And I will advertise it.

P.S. Even Bob Marley wouldn't mind giving you his rendition. All you have to do is just say the words Mr Modi.

Marijuana is an adorable little teddy bear. It stands to make you sit with warmth and fuzz. It is not a bat out of hell cheetah like cocaine. Nor is it ugly and smutty like meth or heroin.

Being from a right wing party, we are sure an empathy can be made about the tradition, association and fact that we as a nation is attached to weed like a a mother is to her child, through the umbilical cord. The cord may be cut. But the bond will remain. It's a sacred bond. Do you think you could help us secure that bond, Mr Modi?

Expectations kill. So does smoking marijuana, right? That's what men with guns and tear gas make us believe every time we step forward with a petition on our tongue. So anyway, I think we will just pray for now that you help us secure the treaty to our freedom to bask in the glory of cloud nine.


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