Upworthy's book GOOD PEOPLE, now available - take a look!

Shop
 Explore 

weed

These fat old lesbians smoking weed are the only thing worth paying attention to on the Internet.

The internet is a truly wonderful place*. Aside from allowing us to order food and other perishable/non-perishable goods without speaking to anyone, it also allows us to connect with people we never thought possible. Like two old, fat lesbians who smoke weed all the time. Did you think you were going to find out about them today? Well, guess what: It's happening. It's happening RTFN.

Sue and Lee are retired and reside in a house with an inflatable hot tub in Maine. I did not know they existed before, but an interview in The Cut brought them rip-roaring into my life, and now, like the interview's author, there is no one I would rather be when I grow up.

Sue and Lee, of course, never meant to be viral sensations. Together for 12 years and married for four, the pair just wanted something fun to do. So they started a social media project.

In their videos, they smoke weed in front of a lovingly placed woodcut that appropriately reads "inspire" in their home; they smoke weed while they pour sugar all over a calendar (it makes sense if you know the song they're parodying); they smoke weed out of off-brand barbies. Recently, they filmed a video of themselves singing "Like a Virgin" while holding hands in bed. These videos are so silly, so unflinchingly and honestly cheesy, so mundane**.

"We didn’t plan on being part of a movement. We just are fat, and old, and gay," Lee says in the couple's interview with The Cut. That's also exactly what makes them so incredibly important.

Let me tell you a quick story: I knew I was gay really, really early in life. But I also knew that people thought being gay — even in San Francisco, where I live — was wrong. It's a message I got from everywhere — from the media, which primarily played homosexuality for shock value in the '90s, to my parents, who had bought into these negative stereotypes. They would bundle us all into the car when visitors came to town and take us down Castro street where we could gawk at the homosexuals openly holding hands.

It was especially sad for me. I'd sit in the back of that car and hope that maybe this whole "gay thing" was just a phase. And when it wasn't, I worried about being one of those old gay dudes in The Castro. I didn't have any role models to show me that you could be gay, old, and happy. Even though I eventually figured it out, I know that I would have loved to have a Sue and Lee to show me that life could be fucking awesome at all stages, body types, and sexual orientations.

"We’re hoping that people see us as just normal, everyday people. We’re trying to tell people not to hate gays, or fat people, or old people," Sue says in the interview.

You keep rocking on, ladies. Let's spread their message far and wide.

*It is also dark and full of terrors, but we are not speaking about that today.

**Take note, Met Gala attendees: This is what camp is!

The gubernatorial candidate did not mince words.

The world already knows Cynthia Nixon, the actress.

But now, New Yorkers are getting the first glimpses of Cynthia Nixon, the gubernatorial candidate.

Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images.

In March, the "Sex and the City" star and longtime progressive activist announced her candidacy for governor of New York. She's focused on curbing inequality, stomping out big money influence in politics, and fixing a subway system that's currently in shambles.

She also hopes to end New York's "racist war on drugs" while she's at it.

In a campaign video shared on April 11, Nixon clarified her position on cannabis — and she didn't mince words.

"A lot of you have been asking about my position on marijuana, so here it is," she began. "I believe it's time for New York to follow the lead of eight other states and D.C. and legalize recreational marijuana."

Her reasoning came down to two critical, fact-based points.

1. Let's get real: White people can use weed with little fear of repercussion. It's a different story for people of color.

Despite the fact white people and people of color use marijuana at roughly the same rates, the vast majority of New Yorkers arrested for possession are Black and Latino, as Nixon emphasized.

This form of systemic racism forces a ripple effect onto communities of color. Beyond jail time, a flawed record creates even more barriers to securing employment and housing.

You don't have to look far to see exactly what Nixon is talking about.

[rebelmouse-image 19398090 dam="1" original_size="694x413" caption="Image via @norcross/Twitter." expand=1]Image via @norcross/Twitter.

"The simple truth is, for white people, the use of marijuana has effectively been legal for a long time," Nixon said. "Isn't it time we legalize it for everybody else?"

2. New York — and every state, really — could put the tax revenue raked in from regulated weed to great use.

Last year, Colorado hit a milestone: It raised over $500 million in tax revenue from marijuana since weed became legal there in 2014. Most of that money went toward funding public schools.

In Oregon, where legal weed hit the market in 2016, sales for recreational cannabis boosted schools, public health, and local governments.

Nixon wants the same for New York.

"In addition to ending a key front in the racist war on drugs, regulating and taxing marijuana would generate hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue for our people and create important agricultural opportunities for our state," she said.

Legalizing marijuana is the smart and fair choice for leaders aiming to make a practical, positive change.

Their communities could have better schools and fewer people behind bars — as well as one less reason for law enforcement to target people of color for harmless drug offenses.

All those leaders need now is a little bit of nerve.

"If there was more political courage coming out of Albany, we would have [legalized marijuana] already," Nixon said.

This is one Twitter thread that's worth a read.

Earlier today, real-life "Dukes of Hazzard" villain Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III announced plans to crack down on marijuana in states that have legalized it.

In a three-paragraph Justice Department memo, Sessions directed U.S. attorneys to disregard past policy about turning a somewhat blind eye to pot when it came to the more than two dozen states that have legalized it for medicinal or recreational use, saying, "Today's memo on federal marijuana enforcement simply directs all U.S. attorneys to use previously established prosecutorial principles that provide them all the necessary tools to disrupt criminal organizations, tackle the growing drug crisis, and thwart violent crime across our country."

Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

The official Twitter account for the Colorado state Senate Democrats took aim at Sessions' push in a thread equal parts informative and amusing.

Legal weed has been around in Colorado for quite awhile, with voters approving a medical marijuana ballot measure way back in 2000, and giving the thumbs up to recreational use in 2012.

By most accounts, legal weed in Colorado has been a pretty big hit — which Colorado's Senate Democrats laid out in excruciating detail.

Hearing news about Sessions' plan to fight the states on this, they kicked off an epic Twitter thread with what's just a clearly great joke: "We'll give Jeff Sessions our legal pot when he pries it from our warm, extremely interesting to look at hands."

With that one-liner out of the way, they laid out a really strong case for letting states handle this. For one, it's really, really been great for the economy. "Since legalization, marijuana has generated $617,767,334 in tax revenue," read one of the tweets. "Instead of going to drug cartels, that money helps fund our schools and addiction treatment programs for more dangerous drugs."

They went on to list a number of projects funded by the state's "Build Excellent Schools Today Act" program, which gets some of its funding from marijuana taxes.

"Is your school's roof TOO NICE?" another tweet read. "Jeff Sessions is on the case."

They concluded as they started: with a joke. "If only there was some way we could mellow him out," they pondered.

Public opinion on marijuana legalization continues to steadily climb, marking Sessions for the political anachronism that he is.

According to an October poll from Gallup, 64% of Americans think it's time to legalize pot. The truth is that most people simply don't care what others decide to do with their body and their free time. By and large, it's not dangerous — at least no more than alcohol or cigarettes — and its reputation as a "gateway" to harder drugs has been mostly debunked.

Sessions' vendetta against marijuana is widely known. He's said "Good people don't smoke marijuana," and in the 80s remarked, "I thought those guys [the Ku Klux Klan] were OK until I learned they smoked pot," and as recently as last March, suggested that it's just as dangerous as heroin. We get it, Jeff. You don't like pot.

Even Donald Trump seems to know that public opinion isn't on the side of regressive Drug War-era enforcement, going so far as to say that his attorney general wouldn't do what his attorney general is doing right now (Trump lies a lot, guys).

Even Cory Gardner, Colorado's Republican senator, understands that beefing up federal enforcement of anti-pot laws isn't what the country needs right now, threatening to use his power to grind Justice Department nominees to a halt. Gardner votes in line with the Trump’s and Sessions’ agendas nearly 95% of the time, so this type of fierce opposition should send a strong message.

If there's one thing we can all learn from this, it's how hollow the convictions of those who champion "states' rights" and "small government" can be.

Whether it's in fighting states' abilities to enact their own laws around pot, micromanaging what a woman can do with her uterus, demanding to know what a trans person's genitals look like, or dictating who has the right to protest for racial justice and how they should do it, "small government" often means complete authoritarian control. Perhaps these politicians should heed a bit of their own rhetoric. "Don't tread on me," right?

Efforts to help the homeless are on the up and up.

If you had high hopes about how Colorado's legal weed situation would pan out, you're probably feeling pretty lit right about now.

Photo by Jose Cabezas/AFP/Getty Images.

I won't get too far into the weeds, but basically, many Coloradans are really enjoying their mile-high lives.

The state made $135 million from marijuana tax revenue last year, making cannabis a smoking-hot Colorado commodity right now.

Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images.

The city of Aurora, Colorado, is using all that extra green to help improve the lives of its homeless citizens.

Of that $135 million figure, Aurora raked in $2.65 million and expects the total to be in the $5.4 million range for 2016, according to The Denver Post.

A significant portion of that revenue will be going toward nonprofits aimed at curbing homelessness.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

Aurora City Council allocated $220,000 for Colfax Community Network — a nonprofit that, among other services, provides homeless families living in area motels with crucial aid, like food, clothing, and hygiene kits.

Two other groups — Comitis Crisis Center and Aurora Mental Health — will get vans to help with their street outreach programs.

As decided last September, significant chunks of the remaining pot revenue for 2016 will bolster efforts from other city charities and help fund a rec center.

"We wanted to be able to show citizens that we are having a positive impact on the community and point to specific projects or initiatives to where that money is going to," Aurora city councilman Bob Roth told The Denver Post last year.

Weed has been a big hit in the Centennial State, and fighting homelessness isn't the first worthy cause to benefit from it.

Last year, legal weed created a nearly $1 billion industry in Colorado, and more than $35 million in sales went into funding school construction projects.

"These are amazing numbers," according to attorney Steve Fox, who helped push for weed legalization in the state. "Especially on the tax revenue side."

Photo by Theo Stroomer/Getty Images.

"The additional tax revenue far exceeds the cost of regulating the system," Mason Tvert, the director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, said in a statement in February. "Regulating and taxing marijuana has been incredibly successful in Colorado, and it represents a model for other states to follow."

The perks to legalizing weed, both recreationally and medicinally, are stacking higher and higher.

Some research has suggested relaxing marijuana laws may lower incarceration rates without sacrificing public safety. Medicinal marijuana is backed by a large majority of doctors as a better alternative to alleviate pain for certain chronic conditions.

And, as Colorado and other states have learned, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate a pot industry that ups funding for important causes. It's no wonder Americans are increasingly in favor of legalizing marijuana from sea to shining sea.

Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images.

At the end of the day, the money brought in from legalizing marijuana is money the state, the city, and these programs wouldn't otherwise have.

When you put it that way, the decision to make weed legal seems pretty straightforward for those in Aurora: create an industry that can pump millions of dollars into causes that benefit struggling Coloradans who could use a hand-up or ... don't do that?

Every city could do with taking a page out of Aurora's playbook.

The state of Oregon just had its first week of legal recreational cannabis sales.

And from the looks of it, people are in fantastic spirits.

Photojournalist Josh Edelson was on the scene during the historic week. Here's what I learned from some what he captured.

The dispensaries are like real stores.

Here's one called Farma. It's right next to a restaurant. Like a real store!

All photos by Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images.

As long as you have an ID showing you're 21 or older, you can just walk right in off the street.

No special documentation needed.

Some dispensaries might even feel like you're in a cutesy-rustic spice or tea shop.

Look at Oregon's Finest, with its wood and jars and the absence of security glass and armed guards.

Buying weed in the Beaver State is turning into a proper customer experience.

You can casually stroll through shops, browsing a variety of products.

You can visually inspect different types of cannabis. I mean, you can really get in there.

You can even smell-test different strains to sniff out something that suits your fancy.

And like a good customer experience, Oregon's dispensaries offer something for everyone.

From your standard bud...

...to edibles for the smoke averse (although these are only available if you have a valid Oregon Medical Marijuana Program ID card).

And once you've settled on a product, you can rest assured that you're getting your money's worth. They'll weigh it, package it, and send you on your way in no time.

With $11 million in revenue in the first week alone, it's hard to argue Oregonian voters made a bad economic decision.

According to KGW Portland, "That figure could mean the state's estimate is shockingly low for how much money it'll make when pot taxes kick in this January."

Part of the reason is because cannabis has a diverse customer base. It's not just your usual suspects.

It's not just men.

It's not just women.

It's not even just young people.

Cannabis users span generations.

"Obviously, we're seeing a young crowd," one worker at a dispensary called Freshbuds told KGW. "But we're also seeing people in their 50s and 60s that would never have bought the product if it wasn't legal."

All Oregon residents, whether they toke or not, stand to benefit from the harvest.

When voters approved the ballot measure legalizing recreational cannabis, the state estimated it would bring in $9 million in taxes and fees. But the Oregon Retail Cannabis Association thinks the industry could generate three to four times as much.

And tax revenues from cannabis sales are earmarked for schools (40%), mental health services (20%), law enforcement (35%), and the state health authority (5%).

Legalizing cannabis is more than just a tax win.

It is, to be sure, a tax win. According to Huffington Post, Colorado and Washington, the "pioneer pot states," made at least $200 million in their first year. But if that doesn't sway you in the way of the weed, think about it like this:

It's also a matter of freedom. The freedom of access to a medicine with tons of health applications and from the fear that your life will implode because you wanted or needed it.

If there are two things this country's all about, they're freedom and money. So here's hoping more states follow. Because they only have something to gain from it.