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Anti-Marijuana Karen Robs D.C. Medical Marijuana Patient of His Right to Medicate in His Own Home! [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-06-07
Before we get into details of the marijuana-hating Karen who sued her Washington, D.C. neighbor to force him to stop using medical marijuana, let’s address contentious issues around the term “Karen” used as street slang to describe a narcissistic, pushy white woman who uses her white privilege to harass others.
One controversy surrounding the Karen designation is the claim it’s misogynistic. This claim rings false in most cases, especially when you know that the term “Chad” is used to describe a narcissistic white man who uses his white privilege to harass others.
There are entire YouTube channels showing Karens and Chads yelling at people and otherwise making lives miserable.
But one thing that concerns me is that about 30% of the videos do not show a person unjustifiably interfering with another person’s actions. Instead, some people are called Karens or Chads because they legitimately interrupt obviously illegal, dangerous, or extremely disruptive behavior.
For example, I saw a Karen video in which hordes of feckless teenagers were constantly trespassing on a white woman’s land by having loud parties that harmed her property, and racing dirt bikes on her property.
When, in an exasperated by totally controlled manner she confronted the teens, they recorded her and uploaded a video calling her a Karen.
But in most Karen/Chad cases that become public, it looks like the Karen/Chad really is just an obnoxious loser who wants to tell everybody else what to do, often with racist, sexist, or other nefarious overtones and intentions.
The famous Central Park Karen fiasco featured a white woman with her dog illegally off leash in a wildlife conservation area who Karened an African-American wildlife advocate, then called police on him and played the race card by falsely claiming the black man was attacking her, is definitely a classic Karen scenario.
Now we see another Karen, from Washington, D.C. This Karen is 76-year old Josefa Ippolito-Shepherd, who claims to be a retired “independant” (sic) public health scientist.
Josefa lives in Cleveland Park in an apartment that shares a wall with Angella Faserotu, who rented a small sub-lodging to a qualified medical marijuana user named Thomas Cackett.
D.C. legalized purchase, sale, and consumption of medical marijuana several years ago, and Cackett has a legal right to use it.
But Josefa complained that Cackett’s marijuana smoke was somehow entering her home and her lungs, causing her health problems (including insomnia, lol) that only started when Cackett moved in and began using marijuana.
I was unable to view the full case documents for the lawsuit Josefa filed against her neighbors, but if her claim is that second-hand marijuana smoke of sufficient potency and quantity creates severe physiological harms, such a claim would be relatively easy to evaluate for accuracy.
One problem is that marijuana smoke is not a wizard—it can’t penetrate walls. If apartment windows are open, smoke might waft outdoors and into another apartment with open windows. But in D.C., with sweltering, humid summers and cold winters, it’s unlikely that Josefa had her windows open very much if at all.
So I call bullshit on her claim that a lot of marijuana smoke, if any, entered her apartment and body.
Although it’s true that second-hand smoke from tobacco or marijuana can create health issues for people very near the smoker, the science shows the affected non-smoker would have to be in close proximity in a closed space with the smoker, and that repeated inhalation of high-density second-hand smoke is necessary before actual harm occurs.
Even if Cackett was smoking the highest-potency marijuana grown by people using the Growing Marijuana Perfectly website as guidance, it’s almost impossible that Cackett’s smoke was getting her high or otherwise affecting her physiologically.
In this case, Josefa was not inside a closed space with Cackett. And during lawsuit proceedings, she was unable to prove that Cackett’s smoke caused her any compensable physical harm.
In a classic Karen scenario, Josefa-Karen is basically saying she doesn’t like the smell of marijuana, so she has the right to stop her neighbor from medically using it.
What’s worse, D.C. Judge Ebony Scott recently ruled that although Josefa isn’t entitled to damages, Cackett’s marijuana smoke creates a “private nuisance.”
And in a great example of what I pointed out in my two previous DK marijuana articles, so-called marijuana legalization is somewhat bogus. It does not give marijuana growers and users, or the marijuana plant itself, full legal rights.
Indeed, Judge Scott had the gall to order Thomas Cackett to stop smoking. Cackett is “licensed” to buy marijuana, Scott ruled, but “does not possess a license to disrupt the full use and enjoyment of one’s land.”
She went full fascist by banning Cackett from in his own home, or within 25 feet of Ippolito-Shepherd’s home.
While Josefa celebrated her successful bullying of Cackett, crowing that people who dislike the smell of marijuana nationwide can now fight back against marijuana users, the implications of her Karening and the judge’s ruling are mind-boggling.
One big problem is that an alleged public health expert like Josefa should be aware that poisonous volatiles are aerosolized all around us and indoors, and many of them are far worse for you than second-hand marijuana smoke.
For example, there are gas stations in Cleveland Park. If you live near them, you’re breathing petroleum distillates and other poisons all the time.
If the municipality does any pesticide or herbicide spraying, or if any of her neighbors employ “pest control” services, she is breathing poison.
If her apartment has the common materials used in paint, carpets, upholstery, household cleaners, and other items, she is breathing volatilized poisons.
If Josefa has a car and uses it, she is sending dozens of poisons into her neighbor’s lungs.
If airplanes are flying low over Cleveland Park, they’re dumping pollution from above, and even though Cleveland Park is an elite D.C. suburb for rich folks, the D.C. grid is often a polluted cesspool of industrial and vehicular aerosolized poisons. The infamous I-95 D.C. grid traffic jams, which now extend into Maryland and Virginia, make it so the air in Cleveland Park isn’t fit to breathe, especially during summer.
One wonders if Josefa is similarly outraged about second-hand cigarette smoke. If so, she hasn’t said so.
One wonders if Josefa is suing oil companies and others who contribute to climate change, which right now in early June 2023 is burning vast areas of Canada, and the smoke from those fires has traveled to New York and D.C., triggering health problems and warnings.
There’s no record from Josefa’s professional career that she ever tried to help the world by suing anyone to ensure clean air, water, cities, food, etc.
There’s no record she’s sued to stop noise pollution or light pollution, both of which are proven to harm human health.
Instead, Josefa petulantly opposes marijuana and marijuana legalization, based on her comments and lawsuit.
And the fact that a so-called public health expert is doing activism against only one of the many things she might be inhaling that might make her ill shows that her actions are not well-intentioned or grounded in a generalized concern for environmental purity and health, but in a discriminatory dislike of marijuana and marijuana users.
Now let’s also be very clear about something else—if you use a lot of marijuana, and especially via combustion, you are depositing toxins in your body.
Combusting is not smart. Good news is you easily eliminate the harms of combustion by using a precision vaporizer, of which there really is only one worthwhile portable version, the Storz & Bickel Mighty+.
Or you could use a desktop vaporizer (think electric hookah), such as the inexpensive Arizer V-Tower.
When you set vaporizer temperatures from 375-394°F, you inhale all the cannabinoids and terpenoids from your marijuana flowers, without the toxins and particulates of combustion.
Cackett could also use edibles, tinctures, and vape pens, although they create a different suite of effects than smoked or vaporized marijuana.
However, vaporizers and vape pens often create a marijuana odor. So even if Cackett accommodated Josefa’s bullying by giving up combusting marijuana, it’s likely Josefa would still complain.
How far does Josefa want this kind of Karening to go?
For example, she might wear a brand of perfume that someone else hates to smell. If Josefa worked in an office, and her co-worker hated her perfume and got headaches every time Josefa work out, should she sue Josefa, hoping to use the legal system to force Josefa not to use the perfume?
That’s not a slippery slope argument or satirical rhetorical question. That’s a logical consequence of precedents set by rulings that clearly discriminate against marijuana users and empower obnoxious Karens.
Marijuana legalization activists have long pointed out that restrictions on where people can smoke cannabis limit the user’s rights, and that there’s no scientific proof that second-hand marijuana smoke outdoors causes any harm at all.
Some so-called marijuana legalization includes bans on public consumption. You can publicly consume alcohol and tobacco, but in many “legalized” states, marijuana users have to hide in the closet. But if their closet is next door to Josefa, there’s nowhere to hide!
Adam Eidinger, a D.C. activist who helped lead the D.C. marijuana legalization campaign, said the problem of cannabis smokers annoying their Karen neighbors would be eliminated if D.C. legalized outdoor consumption.
“Hopefully this is a wake-up call for cannabis smokers that they should be fighting for outdoor common use spaces and social use locations,” Eidinger said.
Under current D.C. policy, most people cited for smoking marijuana in public must report for booking to a police station within two weeks and can choose to fight the citation in court or pay a fine.
Eidinger said the policy disproportionately affects residents who live in public housing. Those residents are subject to eviction and arrest under federal laws if caught using marijuana, even for approved medical reasons.
He also noted that in a very dense urban grid like D.C. many people don’t have private yards or patios, makes lighting up indoors the only legal option for many.
Josefa now joins the long list of narcissistic Karens who harm others in an attempt to force their lifestyle preferences onto us.
Looking at a photo of her, and with my background in health and fitness, I’m rather sure her health problems are caused by overeating and other issues, not second-hand marijuana smoke that magically travels through walls.
Here’s just a partial list of what other vicious Karens have done:
A Karen sues the city council after they installed a new STOP sign that blocks the sun from her window for two minutes a day. The sign was installed after a child on his bicycle was hit and killed by a speeding driver
During the peak of COVID, anti-vaxx COVID denier Karens made lives miserable for retail workers and others, constantly screeching about the “terrible indignity” of wearing a protective mask.
A Karen went mad with rage when a wheelchair ramp was placed where she used to park her car. She ignored the ramp and parks in the same spot.
The bottom line is that Karens and Chads are the tip of the iceberg in increasingly political and personal fascist America.
Just like Ron DeSatan and other GOP politicians want to control people’s health care, women’s bodies, school teachers, and free speech, Karens and Chads want to stop you from using marijuana in your own home, solely because they don’t like the smell.
Well, Josefa, I suspect you don’t smell so good either.
Indeed, I’d guess that Mr. Cackett is feeling sick right now because of your Karenish odour. You cost him and his landlord a lot of money in legal fees, Josefa, while also stealing the right of a medical user to use his own medicine in private or at all. You put extra stress and hassle into the lives of others, Josefa, all so you don’t have to smell that evil weed.
Josefa, it’s time for you to change your name to Karen. Because that’s who you are! Maybe we will see you in a compilation like the one here:
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