Women of New Administration To Lead on Marijuana Reform?

Tokin' Women Lady Gaga and Kamala Harris greet each other at the inauguration.

As Kamala Devi Harris,  our reigning Tokin' Woman of the Year, was sworn in as our first female Vice President, it was a banner week for progressive females. 

Pennsylvania's top health official Dr. Rachel Levine was announced as the Biden/Harris administration's pick for assistant secretary of health. Levine, a pediatrician, would become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Levine has earned praise for her handling of the COVID crisis, and for managing the roll out of legal medical marijuana in Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh NORML director Patrick Nightingale commented, "Dr. Levine has worked hard to implement and steward Pennsylvania's highly regulated medical cannabis program. She readily accepted the recommendations of the Advisory Board, adding flower and multiple qualifying conditions resulting in greater product choices for patients and expanding PA's patient population. Dr. Levine made sure that Pennsylvania adapted to the challenges posed by the pandemic by expanding the monthly purchase amount allowed under PA law, allowing telemed for new patients and recertifications, authorizing curbside delivery for dispensaries and eliminating the five-patient limit for caregivers."

Levine has also been open to the notion, supported by science, that cannabis could play a role in alleviating the opioid epidemic. This is in sharp contrast to former Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use Elinore McCance-Katz, who resigned her post on January 7. In 2018, McCance-Katz called research showing medical marijuana states have fewer opioid overdoses "flawed." Instead, she touted her agency’s success in promoting MAT (medically assisted treatment, meaning methadone, naltrexone, or buprenorphine) for opioid abuse, something also advanced by our new Acting Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), Regina LaBelle. (No word on LaBelle's opinion of marijuana. NORML lobbied for the Biden/Harris administration to eliminate the ONDCP.)

Fran Lebowitz: "No Light Happiness for Me"

Voted her class's Top Wit in 9th grade (the last year she graduated school), Fran Lebowitz was afraid to take the award home because her mother had told her, "Don't be funny around boys. They don't like it." The Martin Scorsese-directed Netflix documentary series "Pretend It's a City" captures Lebowitz's caustic brilliance and is a welcome antidote to last week's sad shenanigans from another New Yorker of a stinkier stripe.

Lebowitz's 1978 book Metropolitan Life was a collection of hilarious essays with titles like, "Success Without College" and "A Few Words on A Few Words." She worked as a cab driver, a housecleaner, and a street vendor, but refused to waitress, saying those jobs went to women who were required to sleep with their boss. Shifting to writing for Andy Warhol's "Interview" magazine and other outlets, she appeared as a judge on the TV series "Law & Order" and in Scorsese's film The Wolf of Wall Street.

"Pretend It's a City" features interviews with Lebowitz by Scorsese, Alec Baldwin, and Spike Lee, all of whom she cracks up (I guess boys do like her humor). She is also interviewed by actress Olivia Wilde, who in 2015 spoke to People magazine about "that unfortunate semester in high school when I simultaneously discovered Krispy Kreme and pot."

A longtime, devoted cigarette smoker, Lebowitz once told David Letterman, "I have two main activities in life: smoking and plotting revenge." She rants in "Pretend It's a City" about the "wellness" craze and parents who won't allow their kids to have sugar. 

"We now live in an era where cigarettes are horrible for you," Lebowitz observes in Episode 5 of the series. "Now, marijuana's good for you. Marijuana used to be a horrible thing that would lead to a life of desperate degradation. Now it's a wonderful thing! It's curative. It's...they put it in jelly beans! Or a gummy bear, or whatever you call it. Now of course they won't let children have real lollypops but the mother has a lollypop with marijuana." 

"I smoked marijuana when I was young," she continues. "I didn't particularly like it. I didn't like the smell of it. Of course now, people don't smoke it as much. I mean they smoke it but they also take these other things, these candies or whatever. I never really....that's not the feeling I was ever seeking, was that feeling of kind of light happiness, okay? That's not for me. No light happiness for me." 

"Party Girl" Turns 25

Posey puffs and gets inspired at the library in "Party Girl" 

The recent 25th anniversary of the 1995 Indie film "Party Girl" earned a write-up in Vogue magazine for its influence on fashion. Parker Posey stars in the titular role, wearing a funky mix of designer duds and thrift-store trash, and enjoying marijuana. 

The opening scene has Posey as her character Mary smoking a joint and collecting entry fees to an illegal rave she's throwing, leading to her arrest. When her librarian godmother Judy (Sasha von Scherler) bails her out, Mary goes to work at the library to pay back her debt, but without much interest in learning about being a librarian. 

That is, until she smokes pot at the library one night and is inspired to learn the Dewey Decimal System, which she soon uses to organize her DJ roommate's records. Meanwhile, she romances falafel cart owner Mustafa, who shows up at the library for help with getting a teaching certificate, leading to a sexual encounter that costs Mary her job. It becomes apparent that Judy is envious of Mary's lifestyle, partying with friends and finding love.