I think Kellogg’s owe Michael Phelps an apology. He also might have a case of wrongful dismissal if they already signed contracts and agreed to payment terms. Kellogg’s has been killing Americans for decades using food packed with high-fructose corn syrup, so they can’t say Phelps isn’t in keeping with their corporate identity. They are part and parcel of many of our most pressing problems – from global warming to health care.
In fact, I think the entire United States of America owes Phelps an apology. And a bong hit.
When are we going to have an honest conversation about marijuana and drug laws? When are we going to acknowledge that both our most celebrated athlete and our new president are examples of highly capable people who have smoked or are continuing to smoke weed? I bet if Obama was able to answer honestly, he would admit that nothing would be better than a big fat bong hit of some killer Hawaiian at the end of a long, hard day of being president.
But we can’t handle that kind of truth in America. We have demanded republicans and democrats alike to locked up “those people” so we feel safer. Ruin “those people’s” families and neighborhoods so we feel safe in our hypocritical and safely medicated suburbs. Of course, never admitting that it was the suburban teens who were “those people’s” best clients.
Until voters make it clear that this injustice is over, we really have no room to require or lament a lack of accountability in anything. We are abandoning a whole section of society through a cowardly inability to demand our leaders undo many unjust laws. I don’t think we should criminalize any vice, no matter how morally repugnant. Yes, including cocaine and heroin and Oxycontin and whiskey. Wait, the last two are already legal and kill more people than all other illegal drugs combined.
This is a liberal and conservative issue – liberals for simple fairness and conservatives for telling the government to butt the hell out of our lives. It is also a common sense issue. There are way too many positives to changing our drug laws to count, including the potential revenue for killer weed as well as for hemp such as a replacement for petroleum in many products, paper, food, etc. The only thing keeping Canada and Europe from totally legalizing it is our government’s refusal to be reasonable.
Far from turning everyone into a fuzzy couch burrito or a crazed heroin addict, mary jane can be a gentle and calming mistress that still allows exceptional people to truly shine and regular people to have a nice time without a hang-over or guilt.
Explain to me again why marijuana is illegal in America?
True that. I’ll freely admit that nothing would be better than a big fat bong hit after a long day of slaving away at an occupation that is, well, less than presidential.
This needs to be said. Recommended.
Thanks! I heard he was dismissed from the US Swim Team as well. Wonder how many of his couches sneak a toke now and then? Bunch of hypocrites in this country.
Back in college we had a device named the Cyclotron. Four feet tall and constructed mainly of 4-inch PVC pipe, its sole intent was to promoted enlightened debate and a broader appreciation of the beauty that is everywhere around us. It was invaluable to both.
Alas, extensive use ultimately rendered the Cyclotron a hazard to its users and the environment. It was retired with full honors.
Man, we could sure use it now.
Cyclotron as a permanent fixture in both houses of Congress! I am down with that.
Favorite memories from college often involve Bob Dylan on the stereo with an anthology of modern literature and a bag of kind green bud on the coffee table.
I gained as much insight from the ensuing bull sessions as I ever did in class.
I believe he was suspended for three months.
The suspension, in and of itself, is meaningless, as Phelps was unlikely to swim competitively in the next year anyway.
Having said that, I like the premise of the blog. I choose not to smoke, but really, we need to be more grown up on the subject of marijuana.
Well, that’s not as bad then, but I still think it misses an opportunity for us all to come clean on weed, so to speak.
Obama has yet to put in a long hard day as president. To busy with cocktail parties and such.
He was so familiar with his trillion dollar porkulus bill that when asked, he didn’t even know what was in it. Of course that might have been the two hits of Gungie he did before coming on stage.
I’ve always thought it a bit un American making unlawful something that just grows right up out of the ground. To me, Teddy’s Canadian whiskey is a lot more dangerous drug than pot. But you’ve got those mushrooms that’ll make you dumber than a box of rocks for three days after. Probably to blame is not knowing how much to eat.
At times in my life, I’ve smoked it by the shoebox full. Just according to what social circle I was currently running in.
Course that was mostly back in the early seventies when you had to roll one big as your thumb to get off. Make your eyes reddern hell. What’s going around now is lots better, of course it’s a lot more expensive too even taking into account inflation. Best by far was what we had in the Congo. They called that Gungie.
I never found weed to be in any way addictive. But I’ve got friends I trust who smoked it all day long for years and swear it was tough quitting when they had to. You can run anything into the ground though.
“Ganja.”
Is that the official correct spelling? French was the standard language over there. I didn’t have a clue. Just spelled it phonetically. But I do remember coming right up to the point of having the universe’s secrets revealed to me a couple of times.
Except for the slight aside, great comment.
In case your are unfamiliar with how the government is supposed to work, Congress actually writes the bills, debates the bills and then either passes the bills or doesn’t as the case may be. Only at that time should the president be involved when it comes to signing the bills, though I am happy he has tried to set a new tone and got stabbed in the back by Congressional democrats and republicans alike.
David Brooks hit the nail on the head with regards to the Gang that is really a initial reflection of Obama’s theory.
I know it is not the normal state of being in Washington, actually following the Constitution and figuring out common solutions to common problems, but we did elect a Constitutional attorney and community organizer to the post of president. A lot of this may seem like unfamiliar territory after the last 40 years of culture war and naked imperialism on both sides of the aisle.
Now, if you got ’em, smoke ’em!
I don’t need the civics lesson.
It’s only intellectually dishonest to support changes in our government you are unfamiliar with if you’re a private citizen.
If you’re president and you’re supporting bills with which you’re unfamiliar, it’s entirely unacceptable. If the bill in question is the largest spending bill in our nation’s history, it’s something beyond unacceptable.
We’ve got an ‘affirmative action’ constitutional scholar. Might as well be an ‘affirmative action’ brain surgeon. Or ‘affirmative action’ anything else.
Sky’s the limit with affirmative action. Only a couple of weeks and it’s beginning to show in what may turn out to be a painful lesson.
Not even going to comment on any of these partisan (not to mention rude and idiotic) talking points that are totally devoid of reality. Why not come back to this when you have an original idea worthy of debate?
Why don’t you go to hell?
Age before beauty.
Not to mention pearls before swine.
Well, now we know what happened.
Nah gouch, just a weakened attention span. 100% recovery.
But no worry, I’ve got an abundance of surplus brain cells.
Never had a multi-day issue from Mushrooms… just extra-tired the next day… maybe yours were laced with something extra, or were tainted in some way
Surplus as equating to unused, to be sure.
Good one.
Yeah, it was!!
“100% recovery”
Now THAT is the confirmation that you are devoid of any fact-based analysis. Psychedelics cause permanent damage. To be generous, you may be 100% functional, but you sacrificed your potential when you ate the ‘shrooms. I’m not making any judgments here. I’m just stating the facts. Anyone who thinks they are 100% after using psychedelics is delusional … still.
Not to be contrary, but if there was long-term damage done through the repeated use of psychedelics and other mood-altering substances, I am scared to contemplate how much smarter I could have been.
I am not exactly an idiot now, despite what some may think, and that is dangerous enough. Drugs must be God’s way of keeping us from advancing too fast intellectually while our psychological development tags along.
On the contrary, I feel it had a positive long term therapeutic effect on me.
You are the exception that proves the rule.
On the contrary, I am ‘quite’ exceptional, thank you!!!
A colleague won his audition stoned, and is pretty much that way every day. He quit cigarettes, and beer after a while. He tried about 7 months without weed, decided it was not an improvement, came back to it.
It obviously has not ruined Phelps’ life, or Carl Sagan’s or Paul McCartney’s, or Louis Armstrong’s or any of our Vietnam-era vets in Congress.
Not addictive in any pharmaceutical sense, more like your favorite soap, or maybe TV as a whole. Just plain stupid to keep illegal, especially since the only way to ensure it is not easy for kids to acquire is to legalize it. Right now it is easier to get than beer, for high-schoolers. Legal markets replace black markets, so you’ll only have to keep them out of your own stash of it becomes legal.
Yeah, only downside is that teens can easily latch onto it as escapism. If it’s out there, they’re going to get their hands on it.
Had I come in contact with it before I was twenty, I’m sure my formal education would have suffered.
Teens use whatever is at hand – alcohol, marijuana, spray paint, rubber cement, pharmaceuticals from mommy’s staff. If someone is prone to being a slacker, some youthful partying isn’t the reason they fail.
My formal education stopped not because of all the weed I smoke in high school. Nor because we drank Jim Beam and Jack Daniels like water from half-gallon jugs. It stopped because I had a very rough childhood, no father and no discipline. My Mom did her best, but she was living out her own learning experience at the time.
It wasn’t until I joined the Navy that my real education began and hasn’t stopped since. Almost forty and I still haven’t finished my masters, though I will before I hit that magic number.
Well good for you. Proves there’s not such a terifying dearth of adult responsibility at this site as one would be led to believe.
My son, who I warned away from pot while in school, told me it was way easier to acquire than beer. Legalizing allows regulating.
Well, part of that ‘easier to get’ comes from the fact it’s harder to conceal a case of beer than a quarter oz.
Couple of comments:
First, as an inhabitant of one of, if not THE non-jumprope grade recreational hemp capitols of the world (Humboldt county CA), I must say that our economy is driven–good or bad–by the growth, harvest, processing and sale of marijuana. Our law enforcement officials realize this and, unless some idiot flagrantly breaks the rules, tend to cast a blind eye on the industry. We have a mostly benign relationship within the system.
Second, I haven’t smoked dope in over ten years, in spite of being in its close proximity (I’m not a grower, but I know friends of friends who are) primarily due to my Mother’s death from lung cancer in 2002. I might consider making some brownies in the future (hint: put the grass in the butter, not the batter), but it’s not something I wake up in the morning looking forward to doing with restless anticipation.
A study in the Netherlands failed to find the expected correlation between smoking pot and lung cancer. Thinking about the difference between tobacco and pot smoking explains it, I feel.
The obvious difference is user intake. No one comes close to inhaling the same quantity of pot that tobacco entails (I speak from personal experience.) Tobacco is rather like cocaine, in that some makes one want more. Pot is rather the opposite, you reach a state of satiation, and commonly people will talk of “smoking one’s self straight”.
I think a more important difference is the fact that cigarettes are designed to keep burning, filling the air with the incorrectly named “second-hand smoke”. A colleague informed me that he was allergic to my smoke, but only the stuff that came off the burning tip. Makes sense when we realize this is the unfiltered product, not the tired stuff from the inhaler’s lungs.
Pot is always going out—one has to constantly relight. Still, vaporizers are becoming popular, which do not burn it, but only heat it.
BTW, I quit cigarettes, but continue to enjoy steady use of the other. I don’t cough anymore.
WRONG!!!
Tobacco ain’t NOTHING like cocaine. Just ask Obama.
This is just a lame comment and not needed.
I could have just as easily substituted recreational stimulant use, though cocaine is obviously more addictive than marijuana. Barack just recently gave up smoking, as did I, but probably hasn’t even seen a line of coke in decades.
Alcohol and tobacco are still more damaging and costly to society than every coke and crackhead in America.
Don’t you tell me what is comment worthy, BOY!! Who the hell do you think you are??
Obama just took up smoking again if you’ll watch the damn news you know-it-all!!
‘Probably hasn’t seen a coke dealer in years?’ What the hell do you know?
I know that most coke addicts don’t get elected president, but perhaps you are reading different books than I am. He has said he mostly quit smoking and I have no reason to doubt him. If he sneaks a puff every now and then I certainly don’t begrudge him the freedom to do so. We all need to butt the hell out of our neighbor’s personal business.
Hell, the administration is only a few weeks old!! What ‘books’ are you reading dealing with that era that are already in print? Get believable. Good greif!!
Get a decent news source. I suggest CNS.com
Books. As in history books and books on addiction and books on all sorts of things. They are typically made of paper and are written by authors or groups of authors. Books?
If your source for news is CNSNews.com, it’s no wonder you are so spectaculary ill-informed.
Notice to all competent posters!!!:
Please ignore this Troll!!!!
OK – done – we will ignore you!
Oy.
I am on day five of quitting after smoking for twenty years!
I have never felt better, though that change really began when we switched from Marlboro’s to American Spirit. It really is true that the mainstream commercial brands make the cigarettes more deadly in an effort to making them more addictive.
Great comments in this whole subthread.
I smoked American Spirit for a couple of years before the end. I used Chantix to quit. It defeats nicotine, making smoking pointless and unrewarding. Easy to quit, hard to keep going, but cig-free after almost two years.
BTW, I smoked cigs for alomst 40 yrs.
True enough. The long-term is much harder than the short-term. I figure as long as I am done being a “smoker” than staying away from them over the long haul becomes easier. It’s when the stress comes in that will-power is really tested. Good think I normally high strung!
Good for you. I quit after smoking for multiple years, and have never looked back.
The last two things I missed were seeing the smoke and reaching across the table or into my pocket for the pack. And even those were over fairly smoothly, after a few weeks. I guess it was just time.
That’s the biggie for me. I am psychologically predisposed to certain actions now that are all out of whack. I’ll have made real progress when I don’t think about how nice it would be to go out and have a smoke after dinner or a glass of wine or when I am bored.
Good on you Jason. I quit smoking 3 years ago. I had to taper off for 4 months, join a group on line and pray everyday all day for a year (for an atheist that’s a strech) but I did it and I’m really glad. The only thing left now is caffine and that will be over my dead body.
Ex-smoker, drinker, et al.
It amazes me how awful cigarettes came to smell and how strong the smell was on the clothes of smokers. It’s one of those things you just cannot comprehend until your lungs and sinuses recover. What is really shocking, having slipped back into nicotine a time or two is that it takes months, even years, to get clean, but only an instant to revive the addictions to full throttle.
I am trying to keep my quitting in moderation. I just can’t see giving everything up. Life might be a bit too mundane to keep me fully occupied.
Even I, of all people, recognize that not legalizing weed is one of the dumbest things this government has done. Legalize it, tax it, and sit back and watch the need for prisons reduced, the demand for other, much more dangerous drugs reduced, the pain of many cancer patients reduced, and the bottom line for the U.S. economy grow (not to mention add jobs.)
I’ll be in line to purchase it as soon as it’s available.
Unfortunately, stillidealistic, I think you have just listed a whole bunch of reasons why legalization will never happen.
It would make too much sense.
There’s more to it than that. I’ll concede it makes more sense banning alcohol, but it’s so entrenched in our culture historically, it’s grandfathered in as acceptable.
The world knows there’s a big chunk of the population out there whose pot smoking is tempered by having to UA ocassionally. A lot of them would wind up just sitting around staying loaded if it were legalized.
The lawmakers who voted legalization in would be held solely responsible for the lot that group wound up with.
We’re no longer an adult society, as witnessed by the leanings of the group who post here. 100 years ago, everything was legal and it was assumed everyone was personally responsible for their own behavior.
No longer. Some of the authoritarians on these pages would feel the government entirely justified mandating what we can EAT!!!
No one who doesn’t currently sit around slacking all day is going to all of sudden start because it is legalized. This is not only a myth, it doesn’t even make sense logically. For those people who weed is a more mellowing agent, they will simply imbibe when socially acceptable. Just like with booze. Not a whole lot of three martini lunches going on anymore. Society changes.
Look Jason,
There’s nigh 400 million of us. All it would take is one 60 minutes segment highlighting a couple of tragedies blamed on pot legalization to ruin some political careers. They’re justifiably scared of this thing.
I think we are well past these sorts of scare tactics. Too many people are truly familiar with weed to allow such blatant pandering to fear to work. Notice how little traction the “terrorist” bogeyman gets these days with most of us. Hands-on experience trumps fear.
Doesn’t stop the little pinhead, though, does it?
He’s just one of our fellow citizens who needs deprogramming on the right. “Just like some of our more militant leftie equivalents.
They both suffer from a culture war that has gone on for way too long. We need to help guide all them back from the edge of the ideological chasm that divides us.
.
Hey . . .
Your highlighted link labeling individuals (as you rail about not ever doing) doesn’t work anymore…
Duh…
~OGD~
I was highlighting similar verbiage from someone on the left. I messed up on the link tag, which is why it didn’t work. I wasn’t railing or labeling. I could have called him a far left wacko. That would be a label.
As it is, I simply linked to an example of partisan rhetoric that is continuing to inflict mortal damage to our body politic.
.
On boy . . .
He didn’t do what he visibly did . . .
~OGD~
Okey dokey.
Stilli you hit the nail on the head. The reduction in prisons is probably the biggest reason all legalization talk gets squelched. Can you image? The privatization of the prison system (now we call it an industry) will insure the fear mongering around drugs will be with us forever.
What is needed is for Congress to be given a financial impact statement as to how much tax revenue would be created and an agricultural outlook for the South if they could grow it. If the South realized how much money they could make by funding the habits of Yankees, who they believe will self-destruct if they have legalized weed, those southerners would support it being legalized. I sincerely doubt it would change the habits of people since it is so easy to acquire. Maybe more people would try it, but I suspect most already have and those who want, smoke, and those who don’t won’t.
I wonder about how many cells would open up if potheads were let go? How much more time the police would have for serious lawbreakers?
Yeah, like the assholes who do forty-five in a twenty-five on city streets and don’t stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. Apparently, no one noticed the huge success in Broken-Window policing that worked in NYC. Great comment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixKCfJhW_x8
Smoke Pot.
And Pans.
Today weed is not the same as your grandfather’s.
Most people don’t recognize this.
Yeah, they called it ‘paraquat’. One reason for the spike in pancreatic cancer in post baby boomers.
Drinking massive amounts of soda or consuming double and triple portions at each meal is more responsible for pancreatic cancer than pot. There is not credible study that suggests this link. Lay off the talking points.
Largest Cash Crop.
Now THAT’S a PAIN in somebody’s party!!!
And that’s black market. It could be three or four times that large once we really start to exploit it. Turn all those commodity corn farmers into pot growers and see our GDP soar. Agricultural Subsidies is also a huge part of this conversation.
Why if our social/governmental system is too stupid to deal with marijuana rationally would we want to make it part of our tax structure?
Perhaps in the sixties legalizing marijuana would have been dangerous because of they hype. Now it’s just so boring that it’s not likely to make a big stir.
It’s about treating it like every other recreational or therapeutic substance on the market. Keeping drugs illegal only creates a black market and raison d’être for our Law Enforcement and Prison Industrial Complex. It is a societal linchpin, as was prohibition, that must be addressed if we hope to fix any of our other problems.
Jason,
Living in DC maybe you saw the piece a couple weeks ago in the Washington Post Magazine about the couple who’s house was raided by a SWAT team. Both of their dogs were shot down, dead.–one of them was actually running away! They shot it in the ass then walked over to the poor thing scared and writhing in pain and blew it away. The people in the house were handcuffed and harassed and were physically abused by the agents.
This was a mistaken identity case. The owner of the house was the mayor of the little MD town they lived in. No recourse, as it is not apparently possible to sue the police for this kind of fuck up. Though I think they are still trying. Anyway…
This was all over pot. Some drug dealers will use someone else’s name and address to have a big shipment sent to then pick it up before they get home to receive it. Well they didn’t get there in time and all kinds of shit went down because of it.
Now, on the first episode of that new Customs and Border Protection reality show (remarkably bad, by the way.) they had a segment that showed about half a dozen agents with their guns drawn on a minivan at the border check. Told the driver and passenger to get out, walk backwards, get down on their knees, etc, etc. Oops. Mistaken identity. Just a law abiding husband and wife and kids in the car. Yep! Their kids got to watch and experience it all up close and personal. Nice.
This too was about drugs. And it turns out this has happened to them before… more than once before! Similar name to a real drug dealer.
Now… mistaken identity happens. It’s sad and can be tragic and you can try very hard to make sure it doesn’t, but sometimes it just does. Also, sometimes–as we all know–good cops get injured or die in the line of duty. Tragic and sad.
But when these things happen over dope there just is no way to convey the depth of the stupidity and sadness. It’s one thing to see a cop shot down in a raid when what is expected to be happening in the home is a truly heinous crime; It is one thing to see an innocent family wrongly terrorized by a SWAT team because they thought they were making dirty bombs or something. But all of this over pot?
Tragic and stupid… these words are not nearly strong enough.
Jesus Loki. My mouth is still hanging from that first one.
Yeah. Pretty heart wrenching. Can only shake my head in sadness when I think about it. Which has been a lot since I first read it!
Yeah, that kind of shit is the end result of the very first substance control laws passed in the early 20th century. It would be hard to undo them, but possible.
If EVERYTHING were legalized in one day there would be a spike in drug related deaths for a few months, no doubt. But the survivors would benefit from an enhanced, close up, personal drug awareness experience the likes of which can’t be conveyed in an anti-drug TV documentary.
It would be best preceding legalization day with 8 years of INTENSE education in K-12. Visits to the morgue to smell stinking bodies and custodial institutions viewing repulsive smooth mouth druggie victims drooling while gazing at the wall.
It’s possible to legalize all drugs, but it would require an almost unattainable national unity and will.
Perhaps the act of getting rid of modern prohibition (and its attendant evils) could be a moment of national unity that creates a true centrist movement that mitigates both of our ideological wings?
As an aside, everyone predicted that repealing the 18th Amendment would lead to nation of drunks laying in the gutters and a moral decline of biblical proportions. That didn’t happen as predicted either.
I think we have been backed into a corner where ideological soundbites are often offered in place of honest and common sense solutions.
No moral decline?? No drunks laying in gutters??
Either you are a liar, or you lead an astonishingly sheltered life.
Oh, yeah, I forgot the ten drunks I stepped over on the way to the Metro this morning. Hyperbole aside, most of our moral decline has been in the corporate aeries and backrooms of Congress, not the corner bars.
The statement was that there would be a significant rise in public intoxification, and there was not. It remained stable.
To go further with the education point you made, spriche, I agree that were drugs to be legal, the country could have a much more open debate about them. Right now, I suspect the majority of people that use drugs are afraid to speak openly about them. I also suspect that, even if they did, a moral indignation would result from the tee-totalling crowd and those hard wired to resent those who smoke ganja. All the while this indignant a$$holes are getting hammered on scotch at night and/or on weekends.
Exactly.
Come on now, get real,
You can’t characterize the opposition to drug legalization as simply the embodiment of raw moral hypocrisy.
I’ve heard persuasive argument against drug legalization, but just don’t remember them offhand.
Couldn’t have been very persuasive if you can’t remember them and appear to support the idea of legalization, at least in theory.
I saw both of those tales (among so many others) and am equally disgusted. I am sick and tired of precedent and fear driving our policies instead of common sense and empathy. Nothing to add, but thanks for the illustrative story. The lives destroyed by our insane drug laws are legion.
Norse God, good to see you. 😉
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/08/02/another-police-raid-more-dead-dogs/
So Jason, you think all drugs should be legal? I can’t agree with you there.
Here’s one of the great hypocrisies of society that makes me so angry: marijuana is labeled a gateway drug, which is ridiculous. (Except possibly in the sense that you might meet some people in the market who sell other drugs. All the more reason to take it out of that market.)
But. A real gateway drug? Oxycontin.
Hilary,
If you don’t mind, I’d like to chime in.
I’m one who would like to see all drugs decriminalized. Meaning we need to stop sending people to jail over what is essentially a medical condition. Addiction.
Legalize, decriminalize, regulate, tax. Look to some Scandinavian/European countries and consider their approach. Just consider it. Make adjustments if necessary, tweak it here and there. What we have in the U.S. today is insanely counterproductive. Almost anything else would be an improvement.
Oh forgot the most important part!
Health care! Treatment.
Yeah, lets just tax the living hell out of those responsible adults scrimping to provide for their children and spend it on a bunch of worthless, shiftless, trifflig bums.
You know, I can detect an opiate addict by smelling them. But I can detect a whining socialist from upwind.
That is a good point, and I wasn’t thinking about it in terms of that. I had a friend who got addicted to heroin when he was in high school (through Oxy). He managed to get himself clean. On his own. And stay that way. Thank God. But there’s so many others who that isn’t the story. And I would have never supported throwing him in jail for it.
But here’s a question – if it’s decriminalized, does that change the policies toward users and dealers? Or are dealers still arrested?
Another question. How do we get people in rehab? Would there still be penalties (just not jail time?)?
I just don’t know about the efficacy of forcing people into rehab, though on one level that’s what I think, but the reality of it – well, I’ve known several people who have suffered addiction to one substance or another (legal and illegal). None of them got clean until they really wanted to.
Another thing here would be, for me, restructuring drug education. It strikes me as profoundly dishonest to lump alcohol and heroin together in the “depressant” category (as we did when I was in school). My mom has a favorite story about D.A.R.E. – after Officer Dave came one day, we were at the library, checking out books, when I turned to her and said, “Mom, you’re a drug addict.” The librarian looked alarmed and Mom probably panicked for a second, and asked me what I was talking about – well, she’s a cigarette smoker.
Drug education should be realistic and honest.
No, you send the rehab’s employees home with pink slips, release the adult patients to their own devices, sell rehab property and return the money to the taxpayers.
Spriche, the adult patients will end up in jail again. Ain’t it fun to keep going around the same circle time after time after time after time. Oh look, now we’ve got him incarcerated for his life time. Who’s paying for that?
It seems more rational to get the rehab going and give them a chance or two, but crimes committed are still punished accordingly whether they were high or not. I’m not in agreement people get perpetual second chances. There is such a thing as too far gone. I realize people need to decide when they get clean and sober and no one can make that decision for them, but I have also seen those who were persuaded through their dire situations regaring legal matters to get clean and sober. They did, they are, and look, no tax payers having to feed and clothe them in a jail cell any longer. THINK of the savings, if you cannot grasp the human cost of abandoning people who have something to offer IF they could only get past their addictions.
Exactly. While the right thing to do is change this paradigm, it also happens to be the most cost effective and sustainable as well. That’s why I think this an issue that both liberals and conservatives can sink their teeth into.
If they’re worthy adults, and given they don’t simply enjoy living in jail, they’ll get over it without the help of some wet behind the ears 23 year old counselor with a sociology degree.
Otherwise, give em more jail therapy. Maybe jail therapy combined with the compliment of an impressive hard labor component.
You know, some things you just gotta do for yourself. Look at the recidivism rate in these so-called rehabs. Just another taxpayer funded socialist inspired altruistic failure. Jail works best EVERY time.
Yes, because jail has been such a great deterrent so far. We have more people locked up, per capita, than any nation on Earth. This is nothing more than Soundbite Soldiering independent of actual study and thought.
Dealers won’t have a job if drugs are sold for what they cost to produce rather than what it costs to get them through the illegal channels that they come through.
How many “beer dealers,” or “booze dealers” are there? When alcohol was decriminalized the organized crime figures went right to drug importing and selling.
Who would want to buy something out of the back of a car if you knew you could get the real thing with a controlled dose at the local pharmacy, for less money?
As usual, you are about five conversations behind.
I guess you didn’t notice that I was responding to Hillary. It was separated because of comments in between, but this is what she said:
“But here’s a question – if it’s decriminalized, does that change the policies toward users and dealers? Or are dealers still arrested? ”
There is no way at this site to go back up in front of comments like the ones above my response. You should know that since you’ve been here under one dopey name or another for a while.
Is there a reason that you are an asshole, or were you born that way? I guess you would blame it on the shrooms.
OH. That ‘s right. You don’t answer questions like this.
Jailing people – it helps build a thriving prison industry. Yeah, the new economy. Jason, time to pull your old post out and trot it about again.
You were the only one who noticed that one. I’ll pull it out at your request. Thanks for stopping by! Long time no see.
The real gateway drug?
Tobacco.
So true. If cigarette companies had to take away the addictive additives, people might be able to smoke for pleasure occasionally (I admit, I despise smoking, so can’t personally relate to this); but they are all about getting people hooked.
Dhhh,
I believe you’ve previously quite amply described your perverted methods for gaining your ‘pleasures’.
citation, or quiet down, little boy
I’ll answer all these very good questions (as well as the distractions) down below. Essentially, though, loki has the right and left of it. I knew we would find something to agree on eventually!
Sorry, I didn’t get around to answering this one because you asked a lot of great questions and I wanted to take the time to answer properly.
Yes, I think all drugs should be legal. Some will obviously more controlled than others, but there are really no gateway drugs. If someone is predisposed to being an addict, they will be one no matter what is legal or illegal.
I don’t think we should have a heroin free-for-all, but adults should be allowed to have some coke or shrooms or weed. There is no downside to treating us like adults and a huge upside in mitigating the black market violence as well as our police state mentality.
It’s way past time we started living up to our founding creeds. Locking up anyone for a drug-use related “crime” is the real criminal act. So many societal wrongs could be righted just by fixing this one issue. Imagine the allocation of resources that would be freed up by rethinking this injustice.
One would think the Puritans wrote our Constitution instead of our Enlightenment educated Founders. It really comes down to releasing some fairly well-honed Pavlov responses to these sorts of issues. Our capitulation to draconian measure after 9/11 was enabled by years of a violent and pervasive dug war.
The problem with pot is that it leads to worse things. The kids START on pot and then go on to harder things like nytol. Pretty soon they are taking aspirin or tylenol by the handful. After that they are using human growth hormones and steroids.
At that point they are not just swimming faster, they are enjoying it more.
Eventually they end up with cigarettes and whiskey and smell like my grandpa used to smell. Some to think of it, that is how I smell right now.
When I was growing up in the ’50s more doctors smoked lucky strikes but none of them smoked mary jane. Of course all those doctors are dead now and coughing somewhere in purgatory.
THE END
Thanks for giving me a greater appreciation for satirical asides as a way of making a profound point. I am happy to report I got it on the first read this time!
Ooo. Sorry I’m so late piggy-backing this string… I was hotboxing some sweet, sweet dank in my broom closet. Mmmm. Lemme grab a few Taquitos, here. Oh, yeah!… That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Ummm…
Hmmm. Why does everyone hate me?
Woo-eee… shakin’ it off.
Anyway, here’s punishment: He has to live-blog the nation, and everyone posting must yammer hypocritical, anti-drug rants. And then everyone laughs uncontrollably. And it’s over. All is forgiven.
By way, I don’t know if anyone else was struck by this: His bong was the size of a bazooka!
Damn. Pass it on, Mike. Whas’ up – you drop the Bic?
Nice. I knew a Cali guy would understand.
Massachusetts recently decrminalized small amounts, and there’s a bill right now in Committee in CT….Also, VT, CO, and others are debating or already have decriminalization laws on the books. The resources wasted on drug offenders is a joke, and has been for decades.
With any luck there’s a consensus building. The more prominent people come out of the closet, so to speak, the more acceptance will come.
Glad you brought this up Jason. I liked you already, but I never imagined I could safely invite you over to my house on Friday afternoon around 5:30!
I’m still at work at 4:20.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ACK ACK!
Fffftttthh… “‘ere!”
Ditto, Dorn.
I am sure the states will get there well ahead of the federal government. In fact, barring the 18th Amendment, I am sure most states would have ended prohibition individually.
From a generational perspective, I think Gen X and the Millennials are a lot less paranoid about the issue than many of our parents or grandparents are.
There’s an irony for you.
Did you hear that? I swear it sounded like a helicopter? I think it’s been following me….
:O)
What’s a small amount by weight?
About the same as your cranial capacity.
That’s pretty good!!! I’m gonna have to remember that!!!
Most of the laws that decriminalize are for amounts less than an ounce, but they vary wildly. Alaska’s old law was up to a pound for personal use. That’s a whole lot of doobies.
Hell, if you can put an ounce out on the street rolled up into joints one night here you can live all week.
Ah, didn’t say anything about an ounce being rolled into doobies. I am pretty sure that would get one an “intent to distribute” charge should they get busted with it.
Given my current career I am going to refrain from anecdotes, but I will give a thumb’s up. Michael Phelps should make lemonade out of this issue and stand up for himself and raise awareness that we are a nation of addicts. All of this pill-poppers, boozers, smokers, sex-fiends, bootlickers, Tivo-lovers, powermad, moneyhungry shopaholic workaholic MANIACS need to get a grip and listen to Roast Fish Collie Weed and Cornbread by Lee Perry.
That is all.
Totally agree with everything you said. This is a great opportunity to finally fix this insult to our intelligence.
Clever title. Rec’d!
Thanks! I was wondering when someone would notice that. Sometimes to obvious compliments are the ones never offered.
He smoked pot. So?
Did he have sex too? What are they going to do to him about that?
Michael, ride the storm, baby..
Right on Jason great post. Vets and Mary Jane and Viet Nam; remember it well. The Mary Jane and the PTSD are still with many of us. I don’t have any problem apologizing to Michael. It isn’t right the way he’s getting dissed by Kellogg’s on the back side of the great Olympic event. I know that we’re all in for the Phelps. Screw Kellogg’s and let’s hope that PBIAM.
Thanks, Viper. Love the icon! I am a huge fan of Ali and Phelps. Vietnam vets are high on my list as well. PTSD is another great reason to legalize given the number of young men we have sent to hell on the opposite side of the globe. High quality cannabis could certainly help our vets deal with the horrors of fighting our wars.