In San Francisco, marijuana splits generations of Asian-Americans
- As legal cannabis use grows in the US, older community members protest its proliferation, with one opponent saying ‘more robberies will come, and more violence’
- Younger people, who see it providing both health and wellness benefits and business opportunities, speak of hiding their work from their parents
Community organiser Hazel Lee sends out a blast to her 70- and 80-year-old crew over WeChat: it’s time to fight the evil drug scourge in our midst!
Dozens dutifully answer the call, descending on San Francisco’s City Hall with their sun bonnets, canes, baseball caps and face masks.
As they pose for selfies and gossip noisily about grandchildren, their health and what they had for lunch, a court clerk asks them to keep it down and please do not sit on the wedding chairs until Lee calls them to duty: it’s show time, folks, time to speak out against agenda item 13 requesting permission for a new cannabis dispensary.
The US has its share of culture wars. But this divide over marijuana spans Asian generations. San Francisco, a hotbed of cannabis culture dating at least to the 1960s has pitted mostly foreign-born Asian seniors against mostly American-born Asian hipsters, entrepreneurs and influencers since the state legalised marijuana years ago.
Up for consideration on a Thursday afternoon in May was approval of Pacific Pipeline’s new cannabis outlet in an empty, graffiti-strafed storefront along San Bruno Avenue, a main thoroughfare in the heavily Chinese Portola district.
Lee and her group strongly opposed it, claiming that cannabis was highly addictive, led young people to ruin and evoked China’s opium war and century of humiliation.
