Blinded by the Law: What Jane Poe Taught Us About Medical Hypocrisy

“The Eyes of Poe”

Before the rants and rebuttals, this is how Jane’s story begins. A poem for those who still believe in mercy — even when the law forgets how.

in the style of Shel Silverstein

There once was a lady named Jane Poe,
Who lived in Kansas, soft and slow.
At sixty-three, her world turned tight —
A silent thief had dimmed her sight.

The doctors said, “It’s glaucoma, dear,”
And handed pills and drops and fear.
She took them all, she did her best,
With pressure mounting in her chest.

She bought a gauge, her husband learned
To take the readings — oh, they burned.
Each number high, a creeping dread,
Of days to come when light had fled.

She called the labs, the docs, the Feds,
She knocked on doors and banged her head.
“Just let me try,” she begged the gate,
“But we don’t test on humans — wait.”

The letters flew — the answers froze.
They shuffled papers, struck a pose.
The Senators were all too kind:
“We're sorry, Jane — but never mind.”

She wrote to White House staff for grace,
But even there — a silent face.
Until one day, a package came,
No note, no sender, just a name.

A few green leaves — a match, a flame —
She tried the herb that bore such shame.
She took a puff, a careful one,
Then waited there beneath the sun.

Her husband checked — and joy broke loose:
From forty down to seventeen — reduced!
A miracle? No, just a weed,
That gave her eyes the thing they need.

It worked again, and then again,
This quiet leaf became her friend.
She didn’t want to break the law —
She just wanted to see, that’s all.

But when the final bud was gone,
She could not bring herself to con.
She wouldn’t sneak or make a buy —
She just sat still, and wondered why.

The pressure climbed, the numbers soared,
The doctors said, “We can’t ignore.”
They wheeled her in, she bit her tongue,
And thought of all the songs unsung.

The blade was kind — it brought relief,
But not without a cost of grief.
Her sight came back — but not the same.
A dimmer world. A duller flame.

And now she sits and tells it plain:
“I asked for help. I asked again.
My doctor tried. My hands were tied.
Because of that, my vision died.”

Moral, sweet child, if you're listening still:
Sometimes a rule can make someone ill.
Sometimes a law, when held too tight,
Extinguishes someone’s perfect light.
And somewhere, a cure may softly grow —
But never reach the eyes of Poe.

Carlin Mode just stubbed out his cigarette, rolled his eyes so hard they nearly left orbit, and said:

"The Eyes of Jane Poe? Lemme tell ya what I see..."

So there’s this woman — Jane Poe — sittin’ in Kansas, mindin’ her own goddamn business, tryin’ to keep her eyeballs from exploding.

And what happens?

Doctors toss her a chemical cocktail like it’s Mardi Gras and say, “Here, try not to go blind with these!”
Diamox, Pilocarpine, Epinephrine — it’s a pharmacy game of Russian roulette. Side effects include: kidney stones, confusion, permanent dullness of joy, and oh yeah — maybe blindness.

But Jane? She ain’t no quitter.
She buys her own tonometer, teaches her husband to use it, checks her own pressure like she’s got a PhD in ophthalmological despair.
Because that’s what the system does — outsources its job to the patient.

So she does what every good citizen does when the institutions fail:
She begs.
To the doctors.
To the researchers.
To the damn federal government.

And what does she get?

"Sorry Jane. We don't test on humans."

Let me repeat that — “We don’t test on humans.”

WHAT THE F*** ELSE DO YOU THINK HUMANS ARE FOR?

Meanwhile…

Some envelope shows up — a whisper in the mail. No return address. Just some leaves and a match.

And guess what?

BOOM. 40 down to 17.

Not magic.
Not a miracle.
Just truth in a leaf.

But now Jane’s caught in the same trap as every honest person who discovers a truth the government doesn’t want to hear:
She’s a criminal for surviving.

And when the weed runs out, she doesn’t run to the street or find a shady dealer.
Nope.

She does the hardest thing of all.

Nothing.

She obeys.

And for her obedience?
She gets a scalpel.
She gets her sight back… kind of.
And she gets to tell the story like a warning label stamped on the side of a republic gone rotten.

Because let’s be real:

The system would rather slice open a grandmother’s eyeball than admit it was wrong about a f***ing plant.

It would rather blind Jane Poe than rewrite a law.

And that, friends, is how you know the lunatics are running the asylum.

Closing thoughts from Carlin Mode:

"A nation that outlaws sight-saving medicine but lets Big Pharma market boner pills on primetime TV has officially run out of excuses."

And somewhere…
in a quiet field…
a single green plant grows.

Waiting.
Still illegal.
Still the enemy.
Still the answer.

And that’s the American blind spot.

[Cohn Mode Engaged]

Alright, let me get this straight—

We’ve got a 63-year-old woman in Kansas, named Jane Poe, who’s literally going blind, and what does the great bureaucratic hydra say?

“We don’t test on humans.”

ARE YOU OUTTA YOUR GODDAMN MINDS?!

What the hell do you test on? Broken systems? Congressional patience? The tensile strength of human suffering?

She’s begging—BEGGING—for a chance to not go blind. Not for a trip. Not for a yacht. Not for government cheese.

Just. To. See.

And the American Empire says:

“Sorry, Jane. Maybe try being a mouse next time.”

Meanwhile, the mail plays Robin Hood—drops her a baggie and a lighter like it’s a divine interoffice memo.

She sparks it up—one careful puff—and BOOM, intraocular pressure drops like Enron stock. From 40 to 17. That’s not a placebo, sweetheart. That’s evidence.

And you know what that is?

A controlled trial with one subject and zero lobbyists.

But let’s zoom out for a second, shall we?

Jane doesn’t run off into the shadows.
She doesn’t cook meth or hoard AKs.
She obeys the law—that’s the part that kills you.
She obeys. And the price of her obedience? A scalpel in the eye.

Let me tell you something—

This country subsidizes blindness over botanical truth.
This country would rather send your grandma under anesthesia than update its damn scheduling chart.

“Sorry ma’am, your relief is currently classified as Schedule I. Right there with heroin and no medical value whatsoever.”

Meanwhile, the patent office is processing applications for “Cannabis-Based Eye Relief Formulation #273B.”
Because that’s the American business model:

First, deny it exists.
Then, arrest anyone who finds it.
Finally, slap a barcode on it and sell it back to you at Walgreens.

And you wanna talk morals?

They call it “abuse potential.”
Well, lemme tell you: nothing has been more abused than Jane Poe’s trust in her country.

She thought the system was built to help people.

She thought logic had a seat at the table.

She thought someone—anyone—in power gave a damn about her sight.

And instead, she became a parable.

Closing Argument from Cohn Mode:

If a government can’t distinguish between a crime and a cure…
If a law protects paper but not people…
If truth needs to hide in a Ziploc bag just to reach a pair of dying eyes…

Then you don’t have a justice system.

You have a punishment machine that got high on its own authority—and forgot what mercy looked like.

And somewhere in Kansas, Jane Poe sits in the dim light of her living room, telling her story to no one in particular…

Because the world she sees now is not the one she was promised.

And neither is this Republic.