WA State Cancels "Marijuana"

The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board on Wednesday morning adopted a motion to implement 2022 legislation replacing the word “marijuana” with “cannabis” in state law.

Why would it matter to anyone what they call it as long as they can get high on it?

House Bill 1210 makes the switch in terminology to combat what it calls the historical racism associated with the word “marijuana.”

Progressives always change the meanings of words to satisfy some politically correct social engineering goal.

Progressives have become masters of vocabulary manipulation. They rarely say what they mean.

Be informed, not misled.

Remember when President Clinton famously defended his conduct with Monica Lewinski by stating, "It all depends on what the meaning of 'is,' is?"

The Left---the progressives,  have co-opted the meaning of words to deceive the uninformed and apathetic public.

When did "abortion," the killing of unwanted, unborn children become "a woman's right to reproductive healthcare?"

First, let's take a look at Washington State's word switch from "marijuana" to "cannabis."

I don't know what the real motive is, but it appears the word "marijuana" has been deemed to be a "racist" term. 

Here's the explanation:

The Evergreen State became one of the first two states – along with Colorado – to legalize adult recreational use of cannabis when voters approved Initiative 502 on Nov. 6, 2012.

Although the terms are often seen as interchangeable, the Spanish word “marijuana” was once used to emphasize the foreign nature of the drug at a time of increased xenophobia.

In the early 20th century, the United States saw an influx of tens of thousands of Mexican immigrants to the southwest region of the country in the wake of the Mexican Civil War. That led to an increase in anti-Mexican immigrant sentiment, including a campaign of “reefer madness” that demonized marijuana users, often in racial terms.

Most notably, Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics – which later became the Drug Enforcement Administration – played an instrumental role in getting Congress to pass the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which banned selling and possessing cannabis.

Anslinger is said to have been racist and often used racist slurs. 

Liquor and Cannabis Board Chair David Postman praised the decision to phase out “marijuana” in favor of “cannabis.”

“I’ll say it’s a great thing,” he said. “It took a little while. Some may think this is a simple thing, that it took a little while, and it’s going to take some work to get it all done, but it’s important, and it is part of our ongoing evolution of really the knowledge and acceptance of cannabis and learning about the history of some of these things.”

Cannabis may be "evolving" but in my years of youth ministry, I have seen hundreds if not thousands of kids not discover the goodness of marijuana/cannabis  ---call it what you want, but it has been the gateway to addiction, using the most deadly drugs of all.

Progressives redefine words to push an agenda.

A few years ago (2015) Jim Harbison wrote, "Liberals have hijacked many words. For example, the word gay originally meant feelings of being 'carefree,' 'happy' or 'bright and showy.' Now the most commonly accepted use of the word gay primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual."

He noted that "The term illegal immigration is no longer politically acceptable because it might reflect negatively upon some poor, misunderstood 'migrant' who entered the United States illegally seeking a better life. The liberal left now identifies them as undocumented immigrants, and sometimes called unregistered Democrats."

Even the concept and word "taxes" has not gone unchanged. The government now prefers to call taxes "revenue enhancements," welfare or public assistance is now "entitlements," and hunger is "food insecurity." Racism is no longer based on religion, color, or creed but on political orientation, and anyone who challenges the liberal left's agenda is branded a "racist."

He noted then that the Left, through redefining words or creating all-to-gather new words, divides and conquers. This helps redefine society into newly created classifications of perceived disenfranchised individuals they promise to protect, while fundamentally changing America.

Harbison says, 

"For a stable society to exist, there must be a common language, with commonly accepted and understood words. Such stability undermines the foundation of the progressive Democrats because, without conflict or turmoil, they cannot advance their drive to a socialist society. As long as we continue to allow the progressive left to redefine words to socially divide us, our words will be meaningless and our trust and respect for each other will be questionable."

Progressives' war of language.

Whether we are communicating something simple like a restaurant order or something complex like a tax code, we expect others to understand. Language provides an avenue to express shared meaning so humans can relate to one another. On college campuses, on social media, and in the courts, this shared meaning is being destroyed. Through linguistic activism, leftists have begun a full-scale war on language, playing by their own set of constantly shifting rules.

In a published article, The Federalist says, "I don’t know when it started or with what word, but the modern American lexicon is changing faster than society can keep up. Any twentieth-century liberal who walked onto a college campus today would be more confused than the town drunk from Babel straggling into town the morning after a bender. Words can now literally be defined with their antonym. We are a hair’s width and an ounce of stupidity away from 'war is peace, freedom is slavery'.”

The Left has perfected the art of substituting words to suit the political narrative. The play here is almost always to swap out the legal or technical word for the connotation from casual conversation.

One sleight of hand  I notice often is the phrase “undocumented immigrant” in place of “illegal alien.” The rallying cry is that “no person is illegal.” But of course “illegal” refers to the action and status, not the personhood of the individual, and “alien” is the technical term for a foreign citizen.

Vice President Kamala Harris has taken this to a whole new level. She demands that  “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” The problem is that, by definition, to be an undocumented immigrant is necessary to break a law. These word games are not just misleading, they’re often blatant lies.

Human sexuality is the new front line of the word battle. Wholly disassociating words from their accepted meaning opened an entirely new realm of possibility for leftists. By separating gender from sex, linguistic activists tore the very fabric of mutual understanding and created a new class of victims, and by definition, a new class of offenders. Pronouns, the simplest way to identify another party, are now subject to feelings.

Defining words on subjective views defeats the purpose of language, because it creates an endless guessing game, and empowers the other party to choose when to reward and when to punish the speaker. By sabotaging the accepted unity of sex and gender, dozens of new pronouns sprang into existence.

Writing for the Federalist, Benjamin Dierker concluded this:

"The righteous aim of the American experiment was to create a nation of laws, not of men. Today, written law is not supreme, because words themselves are decaying. Judges can decide on meaning, politicians can misuse words with abandon, and activists can weaponize linguistic drift to brainwash uneducated voters."

And he said, "The pen is truly mightier than the sword. The power to influence language is the power to create and destroy, and it must be checked."

Takeaway

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20).

And remember: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Matthew 24:35).

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.