Brandon Jackson

Photo Credit: Joe Budd

“Weed is therapy for a lot of people.”

My name is Brandon Jackson, I'm 28. Born and raised in the City, Ingleside District. Known as the Lakeview Area in San Francisco.

I come from a family and a neighborhood that was low income. Unfortunately, a lot of people did drugs in the household I grew up in. I started smoking with my friends at...I want to say like 15/16. Somewhere around that age. As a kid I did it to be cool, to be honest.

Then I got shot when I was younger and I kind of ran to marijuana to help me cope. I ended up dropping out of school my 10th grade year. Dropped out for two years, but luckily for me, I had a few positive friends that encouraged me to get back into school. That was the best thing I ever did. I was the first person out my family to get a high school diploma. The first.

Dropping out, I was just young and dumb. You live and you learn. I just thank God for giving me a second chance at life, helping me become the father I am today. And without Mike Brown I wouldn’t be here. Mike Brown was a community activist inside Lakeview that believed in all of us. All of us from low income housing, all of us who didn't have shit as a kid. Brown gave the majority of me and my friends, the majority of people in my neighborhood, their first job.

I thank Mr. Brown and his family for taking care of me. It's a blessing to be around people who want to see others win, because I grew up in a society where unfortunately people tear each other down, and kids are smoking weed to be cool.

You shouldn't do it to be cool, you should do it because it helps you in the long run. I work with kids eight hours a day, then I go home and have to deal with my own kids. After all that, I need to go into chill mode. Smoking helps my health, being relaxed and not uptight. I have sleep apnea, it helps me with my sleep, and it helps me cope with my problems and what I'm dealing with as a man. No matter if it's personal, professional. It helps me. It's how I escape.

Some people use it to sleep, to help deal with their demons, but others can abuse it. Unfortunately, I also abuse it sometimes. I just want to be honest. It’s not all good, you have to make sure you’re using it to help yourself. It can go the other way. But as long as you’re not abusing it, I'm totally for marijuana.

As for how it’s enforced, recently I got stopped in a car and I had my marijuana. The officer was pretty cool. He asked me if I smoked and I told him, "Nah. I haven't smoked. I got my marijuana on me though." You feel me? He didn't give me no DWI, none of that. He just told me it belongs in the trunk.

It doesn’t always happen like that. In Hunter's Point, you might get an asshole cop bounce out on you. Don't have no reason to search you. Just because they say they smell marijuana on you, they feel entitled to do whatever they want to do and that's bullshit. I could smoke marijuana in my house, go to the store 20 minutes later, and a cop wants to stop me and say I smell like marijuana? Come on, man. Are we serious here?

It may be legalized, but it’s still used as an excuse to lock people up. Y’all want more numbers. Y’all want more money, y’all want more people incarcerated. We are still in the state of California, where they build more jails, more prisons, than they do schools. It's a fucked up society we live in.

Truth be told, I know that a lot of officers smoke weed when they come out their uniform. You feel me? That's probably how they cope with their demons too, all the shit that they see and have to deal with when they’re on the clock.

I honestly believe marijuana can help anyone. All of us. It calms you down mentally. A therapist can only do so much, weed is therapy too for a lot of people.