Nice one drug dealers, graffers, and women.

How breaking the law can lead to bad laws breaking. 

It’s encouraging to see the rise of cannabis medicines in the US, and now finally here in the UK. For decades the research into cannabinoids and their therapeutic effects has been hampered by criminalising laws. People knew there was medicine in the plant, for MS, chronic pain, glaucoma, and they had to break the law to prove it. A lot. Millions of times. Then, like a straw and a camel, something changes. And common sense prevails.

It’s also nice to see women voting, and going about their lives as equals. In the UK at least, and most of the West. Not all countries or cultures have quite embraced the revolutionary idea that women, human beings who are female, are no less worthy of life than men, human beings that are male. Men. Women. Equal rights. Here in the UK it’s nearly 100 years since women started to be able to vote, and have equality, not all of a sudden, but incrementally so. And for this to happen, a lot of people had to break the law a lot of times. And the law had to be shown to be wrong, at scale. And it was. So well done all those lady criminals.

It’s also nice to see street art, placed in the public domain, by artists. These artists have helped regenerate entire areas, and fueled a generation of ideas, they’ve made people laugh, and smile, and caught the attention of hundreds of millions, and the media enjoys it, and it brought art to the masses in a way never before actioned. Well done street artists, you broke the laws. All it took was a few million acts of illegal artistic expression, and now rather than sitting on blue mattresses drinking Police tea, you and your works are sitting in galleries and studios and are on the streets at scale and being shared on social media printed in books. Just like you knew they would be.

To all the unknown criminals. You broke the laws, knowing it was in the public interest. You took responsibility and risked and in some instances gave your lives to the truth of the cause. You were right. The law was wrong.

I see you and I love you for it.