Photo courtesy of Jackie McGowan.
On Sept. 14th, California will hold a recall election in an attempt to replace Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Among 46 candidates is a California native and devoted cannabis advocate, Jacqueline McGowan.
Within the past seven years, McGowan has worked in cannabis policy, consulting and lobbying. This gives her a deeper understanding of how to improve policy making in California. As such, her campaign for governor focuses on improving statewide policy. Specifically, she intends to legalize psilocybin research and sex work, and bring aid to homelessness, drought and fire issues if elected.
McGowan has been a forward thinker since a young age. She explains, “I became a [cannabis] advocate, unofficially, at the age of eight. My mother was nine months pregnant with my little brother, due in just a couple of weeks, and my father was a pretty heavy alcoholic at the time and was beating her on a regular basis.”
This provoked McGowan to save her money to buy cannabis for her father. She did so because she noticed he was much calmer when he smoked. She continues, “I just wanted my little brother to come out okay and I wanted my mom to stop taking punches to the face and abdomen.”
However, she did not begin to use cannabis herself until she had to deal with her own physical conflicts. McGowan explains, “I was facing my own pharmaceutical prison and told I would never come off of certain drugs that were causing such severe side effects. My family said you know, you should try CBD. They convinced me and it changed my life. I dove into advocacy immediately after.”
Benefits of Natural Medicine
McGowan’s experience exemplifies how people’s lives are positively impacted when they are open-minded to progressive approaches of medicine. Her personal experience motivates her to help others gain access to these same opportunities.
McGowan’s campaign for natural medicine doesn’t stop at cannabis; she also emphasizes the medicinal benefits of psilocybin. She states, “I want to follow Oregon’s lead and I want to legalize psilocybin for research purposes. They’re bypassing FDA regulations and going straight to human trials in Oregon with scientists and doctors; we should be doing the same exact thing,” she adds. “Especially since we’ve got a trauma crisis going on in California and it’s been exacerbated by a pandemic.”
Since the pandemic, California’s top mental health professionals conclude that the state’s trauma crisis has worsened, according to CalMatters.
In a panel on the topic in July 2020, CalMatters identified depression, anxiety, stress, lack of mental health services, and homelessness as drivers.
Post from @thejackiemcgowan on Instagram
Citizen Participation
By supporting psilocybin research, McGowan hopes to provide relief to those suffering from PTSD, anxiety or depression, in turn helping them better contribute to society.
Additionally, McGowan emphasizes the importance of participation and intends to create advocacy coalitions for social issues that affect California citizens.
She states, “it’s pretty offensive for me to tell everyone what I think my plan should be. I need to be asking the people that are being affected by it what they think we should do.”
Social issues such as homelessness, fire and drought are at the top of McGowan’s radar. Her plans to combat these crises would in turn benefit minority groups who often suffer the brunt of the damage. McGowan says, “we should be looking at naming the member of a tribe to the head of the California PA [Progressive Alliance]. Who better to steward for the land than the people we stole it from?”
Post from @thejackiemcgowan on Instagram
Enhancing The Job Market
Post from @thejackiemcgowan on Instagram
Furthermore, her campaign emphasizes the importance of rebuilding California’s job market in order to provide safety for those who struggle to find jobs that pay a living wage.
“I think there are many different ways we can start to reinvigorate the job market,” she adds. “If we don’t start attracting new industries, we’re going to continue to see the mass exodus of small businesses, friends and family that are leaving the state because of economic insecurity.”
NBC News similarly spoke of California’s population decline and explained that a housing shortage is largely responsible.
In fact, NBC reports, “California’s population fell by more than 182,000 last year, the first yearly loss ever recorded for the nation’s most populous state […].”
McGowan is not one to shy away from taboo subjects. In fact, she intends to legalize sex work if elected. She advocates for sex workers because she sees that it’s possible for the state to earn tax dollars while simultaneously providing them with health insurance.
McGowan states, “we need to start looking at emerging markets and people need to stop thinking that their moral high ground should determine what kind of jobs should exist.”
McGowan’s policy expertise plays to her advantage in this election because she understands that passing these bills is often tricky.
“It’s very difficult to get a bill passed. But then, it’s even sometimes almost insurmountable to get it implemented,” she explained.
A prime example of this is recreational cannabis legalization. McGowan says cannabis is less accessible in the post-legal market than it was before regulations went into effect in 2018.
For instance, she asserts, “the day before 2018 kicked in, we had 3,000 dispensaries. Then once legalization occurred, we may have started out with 100 and slowly climbed our way up to 765.”
Policy Troubles
This illustrates that when voters pass a bill politicians and citizens cannot always expect a seamless implementation. She continues, “we’ve just over-regulated this so much that consumers are paying twice as much for the same product they were before they said yes [to Prop. 64]. They need to know that that’s not what they voted for. It’s not what I voted for.”
Implementing policies may be challenging, but McGowan is familiar with the process. However her Democratic opponent, 29 year-old Youtube influencer and financial advisor, Kevin Paffrath, seems to think less thoroughly about his proposals.
She divulges, “[Paffrath] wants to build a pipeline from the Mississippi into California. Clearly, he’s just too dumb to even understand what that would entail.”
McGowan expresses, “I think that’s where a lot of politicians, especially in this recall race, are naive. They don’t have experience at the state level with politics and don’t even understand that they could come up with the greatest idea in the world, but if it’s not implementable then it’s pretty much like a Santa Claus wish list.”
Aside from policy implementation, McGowan believes that legalizing taboo industries and reforming policies with attention to the citizen’s perspective could alleviate some of California’s problems. Her pursuit for a healthy job market is rooted in her innate desire to help others. Whether McGowan secures the position or not; it’s safe to say, California is lucky to have a politician who cares like she does.
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