SOMETHING STINKS IN TUCSON: AND IT’S NOT THE POT

📜 “The Professors in the Closet (and the Lab Down Below)”

In a lab on the hill, past the quad and the bell,
Where the ivy grew thick and the textbooks would swell,
Lived Professors and Doctors with glasses just so,
Who studied a plant that they couldn’t let show.

They poked it and prodded it, measured each leaf,
They charted its power to comfort and grief.
They whispered its wonders in meetings at night,
But swore on their pensions they’d hide it from sight.

“Oh my,” said the Dean, “it’s a dangerous weed!
It might make them question the things that they need!
It might make them wonder! It might make them laugh!
It might make them think about cutting tuition in half!”

“But,” said the Chair, with a wink and a smirk,
“If we sell it to Pharma, that could be our perk.
We’ll patent the process, we’ll license the strain,
We’ll call it ‘Cannabo’ and cash in the gain!”

So the papers got filed in a big, dusty vault,
While the garden was paved without so much as a halt.
And the students went on buying pills from the store,
Never guessing the plant had been here long before.

And up in the tower, behind a locked door,
The Professors still measure… and measure… and more.
They’re waiting for grants, they’re waiting for law,
They’re waiting for someone to forget what they saw.

And maybe one day when the rules all get bent,
They’ll stroll from the closet and claim they’ve invented
The very same leaf that grew free in the sun—
The plant they had studied… but never let run.