Chapter 35

“How can plant be against law?” I ask. “Do men today believe they may control what grows in nature?”

She sighs deeply. “I know, dear, I don’t agree with it either. But that’s not the point. Marijuana, which is the name of this plant, is illegal. You could go to jail for having it, even for only knowing where it is.”

My eyes are very big as I look at her; can such foolishness be?

“You won’t, of course,” she says. “But there’s more to it than that. How many plants were there where you found this?”

I shrug. “I do not count, but perhaps twenty, thirty.”

“Well, honey, they didn’t just grow there ‘in nature, ‘“ she explains. “The stuff doesn’t grow wild here. Somebody planted them. And that somebody is going to be pretty upset if he knows you found them.”

“Why?” I ask. “I only take part of one, and if is as you say I will take no more.”

She holds up her hand to me. “It isn’t that you took one, it’s that you know they’re there at all. People even kill other people today over that kind of thing.”

“Kill?“ I say in disbelief. “For plant?“

“Not for the plant itself, but so they won’t be discovered to have it. For twenty or thirty plants the person who’s growing them could go to jail for ten years or more.”

“This is madness!” I exclaim. “This plant, this marijuana, has many good uses that help people.”

“I know, but we have other things now for those uses,” she says. “The thing is, mostly it’s used today recreationally, to get high. Like alcohol, you know.”

“It was used so also among my people, a few,” I tell her. “Not many. One will not hunt well or do other things well if one chews leaves or places in fire to breath smoke. It is as with alcohol, it must be used carefully and small and at times when mind and body are not needed to be alert. Those who do otherwise will not live long. But is alcohol also against law?”

“No. Well, it is for young people, anyone less than twenty-one.” Twenty-one years seems very old to me, but I do not say this. “But marijuana’s illegal for everybody. And don’t ask me to explain the difference, I can’t. But government has decided that adults can have alcohol but they can’t have marijuana, and you need to know that.”

“I think it before and now again, government decides too many things for people,” I say. “If leader among my people try to say may have this and not this, may do this and not this, in ways where it is not important to others, then he will not be leader long.”

“Leaders today like to keep busy meddling in people’s affairs.” She laughs. “Sometimes a little too busy, I agree.”

“Why?”

She laughs again. “Probably because they can, I suspect. People sit still for it these days mostly; some of them even like it, I guess, being told what to do and what not to do so they don’t have to make decisions of their own. Anyhow, it’s the way things are now.”