Canadian punk band Fucked Up explores the history and politics of cannabis in their new song “Another Day.”
The band has emerged from the punk underground and grown into a more far-reaching presence, exploding the definition of hardcore in the process. Their new album, Another Day, is out on August 9th and will be followed by a UK-wide tour in October.
The title track is out now and delves into our relationship with cannabis, a plant that plays a unique role in many cultures, but whose hardening of societal attitudes over the course of the 20th century led to the widespread criminalisation of cannabis in the Western world.
Such bans remain in force in the UK, and ‘Another Day’ seeks to untangle these attitudes. A slab of punk rock righteousness, it’s the result of considerable research from frontman Damian Abrahams, who writes:
Having evolved alongside us for millennia, no other plant on Earth has had a deeper, more charged relationship with us: they have provided us with food, clothing, fuel, sails, ropes, paper, building materials, entertainment, and medicines to treat countless ailments.
My relationship with cannabis began with my reliance on it as medicine. I had tried smoking cannabis in my early teens, but it wasn’t until the side effects of anti-anxiety medication became too much that I began to see cannabis as nothing more than hippie nonsense. Cannabis completely changed my life and made me realize just how ignorant I was.
I set out to learn as much as I could about this plant and the positive effects it can provide. This video is the result of that journey. But behind the potential positive effects of cannabis lies a difficult and tragic history. As one of the staple crops of colonialism, the labor-intensive production of cannabis was a major driving force behind the enslavement of people in Africa and later indentured Indians in the Americas. Cannabis consumption was then used to justify racist slurs and eventually the criminalization of entire populations.
In the past few decades, big changes have begun to happen. Years of activism have given birth to “medical marijuana” programs. Medical cannabis serves as just one end of the recreational legalization effort. The new legal market has in turn brought a wave of corporatization. The song’s lyrics continue the story that began in “Lords of Kensington,” but they are also a metaphor for what has happened to cannabis since legalization in Canada. A regulatory framework that prioritizes profit over justice and righting past wrongs has handed the industry over to prohibitionists and those who enforce it, rather than to its victims. The song is about the end of the cannabis epidemic and hope for something better, whatever comes in its place.
The first joint of legalized marijuana will be smoked when all marijuana prisoners are released.
My prayers go out to Tracy, Horatio and all the activists and pioneers who were not here to see that day.
End all drug prohibition!
Watch it now.
Photo credit: Colin Medley
