The phenomenon of “mental health disorder” has become so influential that, according to recent studies, every second person has—or will have—at least one diagnosed mental illness in their lifetime. This figure presents an existential and statistical impossibility: when more than half of the population is inflicted with psychological abnormality, the norm has become abnormal.

How can it be that the majority of us are sick? To answer this troubling question, some point to modern realities—social media, social isolation, environmental doom—while urging for societal change.

Others see an aggravating factor. Maybe, they argue, there isn’t a true rise in mental illness, but that one distinctive force is inflating what is a relatively stable emotional landscape—no worse or better than before.

In such a scenario, the seeming escalation of mental illness is largely due to an increase in the identification of psychiatric disorder, and not a rise in genuine illness. That is, people are not suffering more, but rather, normal suffering is, more and more, being called “sickness.” 

Thursday, October 3, 6pm
Come in person to Enarson Classrooms Building Room 240 or attend online at tinyurl.com/CORSmeeting.
A presentation and discussion on the struggle for trans liberation!

A new book called Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre And The Struggle For An American City’s Soul by Aran Shetterly provides a detailed examination, in historical context, of a largely forgotten incident in which KKK and Nazi shooters (some of them veterans of the war on Vietnam), with the complicity of local and federal “law enforcement,” shot at black people in Greensboro, North Carolina, killing five, wounding many, and dragging social progress backwards.

I was nine years old and geographically not that far away but cannot recall hearing one word about the Greensboro Massacre at the time it happened, November 3, 1979. But on November 4, 1979, the “Iran Hostage Crisis” was launched as the biggest news story for over a year to come, yellow ribbons appeared on trees everywhere, and friends at school who made casual jokes about murdering black people but never imagined living near violence or Klan rallies began doing things like singing a song in a school show with the lyrics “Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran.” (More apologies owed the Beach Boys, and the threat to Iranians has never yet gone away.)

There are several promising incremental reform bills that if enacted would move federal cannabis policy in a positive direction — and benefit millions of Americans. Most recently, the Dismantling Outdated Obstacles and Barriers to Individual Employment (DOOBIE) Act, a bill that would prevent federal agencies from considering past cannabis use in employment suitability or security clearance decisions, passed a Senate committee and is now headed to the full Senate for consideration. 

In addition to the DOOBIE Act, there are also several other key incremental cannabis reform bills circulating in Congress. Passing these bills would be a major step forward for our movement and further build the momentum for comprehensive federal cannabis legalization.