Читать книгу Craig Lee's Kentucky Hemp Story - Joe Domino - Страница 13

I was fifteen armpit hairs old when I first smoked dope. The local college students from the University of Kentucky, in Lexington, sold grass in old matchboxes. It cost $2.50 for a matchbox stuffed full of ditch weed. The city-raised undergrads took advantage of the rural youth. Who could blame them? These New York yuppies conveniently redistributed wild growing grass—probably from our own backyards—to my harebrained friends and me. It was a cottage industry where high schoolers paid the tuitions of the undergrads. A perfect model of trickle-down economics: every spare cent I earned trickled out of my pocket and into theirs. I’d do anything for a drag.

In the late 1960s, I was a wild and distracted teenager who never fully discerned the War on Drugs. The big city drug crackdowns that my grandfather would listen to over the radio never happened in the country. Admittedly, I never fully grasped the consequences of any kind of war. That’s why I declared one of my own. I enlisted into the United States Army as a seventeen-year-old. On behalf of the stars and stripes, I fed my innocence to the gnashing jaws of Vietnam. Uncle Sam had pulled the wool over my eyes. Hoorah was swapped for horror-stricken. Vietnam exposed me to incredible violence, as well as the devastating effects of hard drugs. I was fortunate I stick to booze and pot, because 100 percent pure heroin was readily available. Even the straightest sergeant smoked dope to cope with inevitable doom. Anything to keep the nerves steady amidst soul-rattling shelling.

My experiences in Vietnam opened my eyes to the truth about my government. Nam revealed the debauchery behind the slapstick jargon peddled by Congress. I was happy to return to the States when I did, feeling extremely fortunate to have stayed fully intact. Upon my return, I was astonished by the seismic societal shifts that happened while I was gone. The 60s’ peace marches left an indelible sticky trail that permeated the national consciousness. The hardline political machine from my grandfather’s generation had no choice but to loosen their grip in the early 70s after several self-inflicted humiliations, such as the Pentagon Papersand Nixon’s white house tapes.

I was too disgusted with the federal scene to keep tabs on every national scandal; I concentrated on easing myself out of the Army with small-town public service. I decided to work with the Kentucky National Guard. Like a crutch, I needed the civil structure in my life, mostly to maintain my post-Nam sanity. I eventually became the Marion County Democratic Party Chairman. I would serve in that position for twenty years. My intentions were to build a humble political career founded on integrity.

Between the regular town hall meetings, I kept tabs on other politicians from my region—specifically, ones pursuing the same issues as I. One man I was beginning to admire more was Gatewood Galbraith. Both being Democrats, at the time, we had many mutual relationships. We both supported the same agricultural hot-button issues too. Compared to my novice political career, Galbraith had already accomplished a lot. He had run for Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner, as well as run for the Democratic Primary to be the next Kentucky governor in ’91, and again in ‘95. Gatewood’s legend was blossoming as a modern-day “David” against the federal bully, “Goliath.” He proclaimed his pro-Americano agenda with sharp shameless intellect.

What frightened the establishment most about Gatewood was that his truth-saying style of politics was inspiring a new breed of leader. His followers loved him for giving “The People” a bombastic voice for the type of change they demanded. Gatewood made harassing the Washington elites into a contact sport and the elites held him in contempt. Gatewood’s most fervent stance was cannabis legalization. Many attempted to vilify him for that talking point. But the opposition learned their best strategy was to avoid debating Gatewood altogether. If the truth in his words didn’t cripple his opponents, then the raucous cheers from the rafters would. He made politics into a spectator sport. His off-the-cuff rhetoric never became less potent over the twenty years I’d known him. The title of his autobiography encapsulates Gatewood accurately: The Last Free Man in America.

I first met Gatewood during the 1994 Super Bowl party at the local VFW Lodge (Veterans of Foreign Wars Lodge). Our conversation revolved around issues we both supported. I listened more than spoke when it became clear that Gatewood was more knowledgeable than I. I was taken by Gatewood’s swashbuckling caricature. His bravado empowered his every argument. I was now convinced, firsthand, why his parade stumping shenanigans consistently earned him national recognition. It was no secret Gatewood was quickly becoming a cultural icon being featured in popular magazines like High Times and frequently asked to provide televised commentary.

Gatewood and I hit it off. We shared a mutual disgust for partisan politics. We abhorred the idea of seeking approval from backdoor dealmakers, the good-ole-boys network, or the “party leadership.” We weren’t shy about breaking the “political correctness rulebook.” We didn’t believe in sugarcoating how we really felt. Our political foes would not hesitate, if given the chance, to hot-iron our foreheads with the brand, “RADICALS.” Although, Gatewood took offense to being called a radical. He viewed himself, quite seriously, as a constitutional-touting American patriot. Gatewood was, in fact, a constitutional lawyer. He knew the importance of that little document—and the great peril it’s under at all times. Even university professors couldn’t match Gatewood’s knowledge on The People’s Bill of Rights. Gatewood was quick to point out who the true radicals were. He’d routinely attack his opposition’s backers: “Taking money from those industrial fascist pigs that are out to undermine the American dream by implementing a subversive synthetic world!”

Gatewood valued one’s rights over their pocketbooks. When asked about his ardent beliefs, “Gatewood, what do you really believe in?” With an exaggerated southern drawl, he’d answer:

GG: “Individual rights, individual freedoms, smaller government, less taxes, gun rights, and keep the government outta your bedroom, your bloodstream, and your brain, and your bladder, your back pocket, and, uh, your internet bulletin board and put them back in a little box where they belong.” After a short breath, he continued, “I don’t listen to those talking heads on television; I listen to Washington, Jefferson, and Adams, and Franklin. Those are my advisers on how to get the state of Kentucky out of poverty and try to rediscover the values that were supposed to make America great—and did at one time before our cherished values came under such egregious assault.”

He climaxed whenever asked: “Why should the citizens of Kentucky elect Gatewood Galbraith as their next governor?”

GG: “Well, I mean, I been living with people my whole life. My whole family has been service-oriented; my dad was a salesman, my mom was a teacher and volunteer, and, ya-huh, I had six brothers and sisters and all of them had taken some part in being service-oriented. All volunteered on a professional basis. I mean, what the hell, you know it, too, people are what make life worth living.”

A master at keeping his audience on the edge of their seats, he knew how to make a lasting impression.

GG: “Hell, I tell people all the time, If I was going to lie to you, I’d already be elected your governor!”

Gatewood and I were on the same page: blue-collar, anti-war, pro-guns, state-rights, and pro-cannabis. Gatewood convinced me that night at the VFW Lodge to play a greater role within Kentucky’s cannabis legalization movement. Gatewood had fortified my convictions; he made me feel comfortable standing away from the pack. Once I told him I was onboard, Gatewood and I began mapping our strategy. We understood the biggest obstruction blocking cannabis legalization was that the general public didn’t understand the intricacies of the cannabis plant and how cannabis could be grown for various needs.

It was bad enough most Americans didn’t know where their food came from; therefore, I fretted: why would the average Joe care about the differences between hemp and marijuana? I had serious doubts whether we could rally enough support for the reforms we had in mind. Gatewood never entertained my doubts; he possessed an unwavering determination to make people care. His idealism was against all odds, because, at the time, Google, YouTube, and Facebook were still genies in the bottle. Throughout the 90s, the “powers that be” maintained a tight noose on the flow of information. The vast majority of school books came from only four publishing houses located in New York City. And the New York publishing cabal decided there was no scientific or biological difference between industrial hemp and psychoactive marijuana. With only their self-interest in mind, the big publishers felt no remorse allowing generations of Kentuckian school children to go through life without ever being taught a quip about Kentucky’s rich hemp history.

Gatewood and I agreed, over Super Bowl chips and salsa, that in order to proliferate Kentucky’s cannabis industry, we had to inform the public on the differences between hemp and marijuana. In order to do so, each plant had to receive its own seafaring ship and captain. Each captain would steer separate courses. It was time to bifurcate the facts and set the record straight. Our plan had hatched: divide and conquer. Craig Lee would push the hemp movement with all he had, and Gatewood would continue carrying the medical cannabis torch. I would focus on hemp’s 25,000 industrial uses while Gatewood would reverberate the benefits of medical cannabis for muscular-dystrophy, PTSD, cancer, and epilepsy.

By delegating each initiative, we could perform our advocacy efforts with laser focus. And we effectively cross promoted each other’s platforms by holstering each other’s business cards. Mine was clearly labeled Craig Lee, the “Industrial Hemp Expert,” and Gatewood’s card was iconized the “Medical Cannabis Guru.” We branded each end of the Cannabis spectrum with our faces and smiled at the opposition from all sides. It irritated “The Man” that we always had a good time performing our duty. The irony was comical: in order to fight the bureaucracy, we had to create our own! Super Bowl Sunday, in 1994, etched our two-prong approach into stone. With Gatewood in my corner, I never hesitated telling people I was a full-fledge hemp advocate. I knew that if I did my part on the hemp front—Gatewood was executing his part twice as hard.

When the evening surrendered to time, Gatewood shot me one last bedevilled glance. At this moment, I knew I had hitched myself onboard for the long-haul. I was taking up the good fight against Gatewood’s staple nemesis:

GG: “The chemical-pharmaceutical-Military-Industrial-trans-national-corporate-elite-SOBs who never said the pledge of allegiance to the United States of America or to the republic to which it stands and they’re not warm and fuzzy about your children, or your grand-children—and they view the constitution and the bill of rights as impediments to the implementation to a new-world order and global economy. And I’m not going down without a fight!”