Milkijuana?

“Say No to Raw Milk,” will be the popular chant. “This is your brain on Raw Milk,” will be on the TV screen. “It’s a gateway drink,” someone will be sure to preach from their pulpit.

(EPHRATA, Pa.) - Granted, it’s a bit of a stretch, but not that much. Bear with me now.

There is already a fear associated with raw milk that’s been planted in peoples’ heads, no matter how safe the milk business was before pasteurization. I have relatives that are still alive who were in the milk business before and after this new heating process. We’ve talked about it on numerous occasions throughout my life, always concluding that the only reason they used this process is so it could sit on the shelves longer, not spoil and be sold in the grocery store.

“And it ain’t any better for ya than colored water,” my great uncle has said. His family owned Lankerbrook Dairy at one time. I think he has a chip on his shoulder, after all these years, he loved being a milk man.

So yes, I admit it, out of necessity he and I and others in our family, as well as others in this country, have a connection. We deal in the ‘black market,’ so to speak. It is our drink of choice. We joke about it. It’s our family secret. Some times before I leave for my weekly ’score,’ I’ll first look out the peep-hole of my front door for any suspicious cars with darkly tinted windows. I’ll take a different rout every week to my raw milk supplier, whom I’ll call Joseph.

No, I don’t have to see him under a cloak of darkness. No, I don’t have to call a number or leave a text code on his cell phone before I pick it up. He doesn’t have a phone. No I don’t have to send him an email, he has no PC. Nor do I have to meet him at an undisclosed location. He doesn’t have a car. Nor does he have to be in disguise, but he sure looks like he is. He’s Amish, and there’s just one day he won’t do business on his farm - Sunday. And there’s only one guarantee he offers - his family drinks the same. Mind you, I’ve never seen a healthier family. This is the only example and FDA seal of approval that I need to observe.

What I don’t need is some fat fast-food infested bureaucrat telling me what is good for me and what I’m permitted to consume. And thank goodness, after drinking it a person doesn’t feel the slightest bit euphoric from his raw milk. But if they did, you bet your Oreos there would be a Raw Milk Czar in the White House.

The FBI would come down hard on the dairy farm like stink on cow patties. They’d confiscate cows, if not just slaughter them, and render the milking machine as well as all the containers and drinking glasses, now classified as paraphernalia. And it wouldn’t matter in the slightest the non-lethal history of this drink, the health benefits, and it being as God intended it. The milk, butter, cheese, and probably the eggs too, all dairy products will be destroyed under the guise of political correctness. “It’s the right thing to do.” “The message for the children.” “It’s a Raw Milk War!”

Dear reader, as far as I know there isn’t anybody doing prison time for possession with intent to distribute unpasteurized milk. Or any comedian that’s been indicted for selling milk bottles on the Internet. Or any Canadians that are going to be extradited for selling baby cows on their web page. But you mark my word it’s right around the corner, give “them” time. And why not? “They’ve” gotten away with so much before this, brain washing people to believe their agenda, not the truth.

The politician will soon have Raw Milk on their platform. Raw Milk will give the First Lady and her husband something to do with their royal time. An answer for them so they can start looking important and busy. Another scare tactic, another make-work project for them to fix the unbroken.

“Say No to Raw Milk,” will be the popular chant. “This is your brain on Raw Milk,” will be on the TV screen. “It’s a gateway drink,” someone will be sure to preach from their pulpit. “It’s stronger now than what it was in the sixties,” a teacher will recite to your students in a M.A.R.E. program. “Beware of the Raw Milk pusher.” “Raw Milk will make you go nuts and be violent.” “There will be Raw Milk gangs.” “Raw Milk will make men’s breast grow and your children deformed.”

And no there are not, as yet, police officers setting up road blocks and check points in your home town on weekends and holidays with breathalyzers and pupilometers in hand and at the ready to catch the Raw Milk Heads. But hey, in retrospect who would have ever thought our government would have their hands stuck in all that they do these days. And, oh yeah, the Constitution, remember that?

John Wind Bell

The once safeguard of logic and compassion written to protect the common folk against such governmental unruliness means little more now than the paper it’s printed on. There’s no telling when it will all stop. When the people will finally revolt in the streets as our forefathers had to do only a few hundred years ago.

Next there will be a Boston Milk Party where unhappy patriots and farmers will toss jugs of milk overboard in protest, singing, “no pasteurization without representation.” Maybe the last straw will be this: in an effort to make it sound worse than what it is, the name Raw Milk will be changed to ‘Milkijuana.’