Ethan Osborne, who’s the Captain of the Kentucky Pirate Party, and Kentucky Pirate Party member Bingo, who’s also @revoltnrebel2 on TikTok, attended last week’s decriminalization rally at the Kentucky State Capitol. Here’s the report written and photographed by Ethan and Bingo.

The decriminalization and legalization of cannabis and ending the failed drug war has always been one of the biggest issues driving my own personal political crusade and activism. I am a veteran of the drug war and have been on its front lines since I started slangin’ weed as a teenager. I remember a time when Kentucky was a zero-tolerance state where getting caught with a mere pot seed or roach in your ashtray could get you felony charges. I remember getting busted and let off the hook many times back then, when if I would have had darker skin tone I most definitely would have been locked up. Much has changed since then, but the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I have already written at length on this issue in my prior blog: “The War on Cannabis is Far From Over” (https://kypp.org/2022/05/14/the-war-on-cannabis-is-far-from-over/) and “A Follow-up After Attending The Northern Kentucky’s Town Hall Meeting, Sponsored By Team Kentucky’s Medical Cannabis Advisory Committee” (https://kypp.org/2022/07/22/a-followup-after-attending-the-northern-kentuckys-town-hall-meeting-sponsored-by-team-kentuckys-medical-cannabis-advisory-committee/). I also gave a speech in front of the old KCDC at the Northern Kentucky Law Enforcement Memorial on 4/20/2022 highlighting the absolute hypocrisy and atrocities of the bogus drug war, including the Sackler family and big pharma’s corporatist origins of the opioid epidemic – the epicenter being my immediate region of Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio (https://oz2022.us/event-highlights). I lost many friends throughout the years growing up to opiate overdose, including Mathew Casey Wethington, of whom the controversial “Casey’s Law” is inspired by and named after, (which I am vehemently opposed to as it a violation of individual civil liberties and a justification of further draconian implementation of zero tolerance authoritarian drug war action and overall invasive jack booted policy).

My position and the stance of the Kentucky Pirate Party has been made crystal clear. We oppose the drug war and support the decriminalization and legalization of all drugs and treating addiction as a medical and not criminal issue. Prohibition has done nothing but create the mafia, cartels, and more crime.

On 1/3/23, Bingo and I returned to Kentucky’s quaint little capitol city, Frankfort for the start of the 2023 General Assembly. We joined the Kentucky chapter of NORML (https://www.kynorml.org/), the Kentucky Cannabis Freedom Coalition (https://legalizekentucky.com/), Kentucky Moms for Medical Cannabis (https://www.facebook.com/KyMomsMMJ/), and the Kentucky ACLU (https://www.aclu-ky.org/) to show our solidarity with cannabis rights advocates and raise awareness for cannabis decriminalization in our state, nationally, and globally.

Matthew Bratcher, Kentucky NORML executive director explained: “While Gov. Beshear’s recent historic action is an important step towards cannabis justice in the Commonwealth, Kentuckians are ready for and deserve more.”

Governor Beshear has indeed made positive moves to decriminalize cannabis in Kentucky, but its not near enough. His efforts have been more significant than so called prominent pro-cannabis politicians like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie, but this isn’t saying much considering how low they have set the bar. Massie and Paul have had plenty of time to implement comprehensive cannabis reform, but they have done NOTHING. They have continuously kicked that can on and on down the road. They are more concerned with pandering to their out of touch, authoritarian, fascist, theocratic, Reich Wing fundamentalist Christian nationalist minority base because they have more wealth and power concentrated in their hands. These bourgeoise, the elite “southern gentry,” wield nearly unlimited power over the Bluegrass underclass proletariat who are disproportionately affected by the fictitious drug war: the working class, poor, and minorities.

Now of course, the capitalist opportunists have changed their minds and support decriminalization, but only if rich businessmen and corporations can monopolize the cannabis industry. This is why the likes of Rand Paul and Thomas Massie have not taken aggressive steps to legalize pot, because they are opportunist capitalist parasites who only care about their own gain and not the welfare of well-being of the working class.

I feel like a broken record beating a dead horse here. The actual solution is clear. We must nationalize big pharma, and completely decriminalize all drugs. The hypocrisy of having a huge tourist industry based on a toxic poison that is metabolized into ethanol by the body (alcohol, notably in Kentucky bourbon) while locking people up for cannabis and even heroin is asinine. Tobacco and alcohol kill far more people than any “hard drugs.”

Alcohol is a straight up poison, a solvent that destroys every living cell it comes in contact with from the taste buds to your urethra before it is eliminated out of the body. Cannabis is a nontoxic therapeutic panacea that has equal medicinal, industrial, recreational and entheogenic uses. Its prohibition is based on racism and capitalist oligarchs like Dupont and the tobacco barons who first got it banned in 1937. We Pirates take it a step further and demand the exploration of the use of cannabis, kratom and psychedelics to treat addiction and mental illness and the total decriminalization OF ALL DRUGS.

More pics from the Capitol display: