Don't ask where I found the first one. I can't remember. But the second, the marijuana seizure pic, comes from here.
From Obama's Drug Czar (doesn't that phraseology just bring feelings and tingles of incipient authoritarian hegemony running up and down your leg? Chris Matthews, I know how you felt, buddy)...
The nation's drug czar, who viewed a foothill marijuana farm on U.S. Forest Service land with state and local officials earlier Wednesday, said the federal government will not support legalizing marijuana.Get you some of that, Liberals, Libertarians who supported this guy. (Have I said "Dirty Hippy" lately? No? I'm slacking I suppose.)
"Legalization is not in the president's vocabulary, and it's not in mine," he said.
Oh, and nice finger positioning, outside the trigger guard. Cowboy Blob would be pleased.
Speaking of pot, those bongs didn't slow down Michael Phelps who just set his 2nd world record and won his fourth gold medal at the world championships in Rome this weekend. We all remember how you smeared him. But, he's back on top, and you're in the shithouse - as usual... probably enjoying you some real 'man sports' like muddin', beer drinkin', and some nascar. heh. winners win, losers lose.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2009/SPORT/08/01/swimming.phelps.cavic.world.championships/index.html
Ahhhh, my favorite guitar-pickin', likely pot-smokin' Perfessor from MTSU! You Poor Guy, caught livin' in "Nascar" country, aren't you? What, they won't have you at a 'real' University, in a properly liberal blue city-state?
ReplyDeleteMichael Phelps is a great athlete, who just so happens to smoke a little pot. He got caught, acting stupidly. That cost him his Kellogg's sponsorship. Which is fine: the example is, you get caught, you pay the consequences. Lesson learned: use your pot-enhanced paranoia as a 'thinking' tool. Keep you nose clean, don't get caught, or you'll have to answer to the law.
I'll bet you that for every good 'example' of a pot-smoking success story (yours included), I can show you by a factor of 200 times as many people who are exactly the opposite: doper losers who could've done better if they hadn't smoked or drugged. Prisons and jails are full of dopers who haven't won gold medals. Oh, and this...
Joyce, 52 and a writer in Manhattan, started smoking pot when she was 15, and for years it was a pleasant escape, a calming protective cloud. Then it became an obsession, something she needed to get through the day. She found herself hiding her addiction from her family, friends and co-workers.
“I would come home from work, close my door, have my bong, my food, my music and my dog, and I wouldn’t see another person until I went to work the next day,” said Joyce, who like most others in this article asked that her full name not be published, because she does not want people to know about her past drug use.
“What kind of life is that? I did that for 20 years.”
...from the New York Times (that's one of yours, right? Continuing...
Marijuana, the country’s most widely used illicit drug, is typically not thought to destroy lives. Like alcohol, pot has been romanticized by writers and musicians, from Louis Armstrong to Bob Dylan, and it has been depicted as harmless or silly in movies like “Harold and Kumar.” And addiction experts agree, marijuana does not pose as serious a public health problem as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. The drug cannot lead to fatal overdose and its hazards pale in comparison with those of alcohol. But at the same time, marijuana can be up to five times more potent than the cannabis of the 1970s, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
And this new more-potent pot and the growing support for legalization has led to an often angry debate over marijuana addiction. Many public health officials worry that this stronger marijuana has increased addiction rates and is potentially more dangerous to teenagers, whose brains are still developing. And officials say the movement to legalize marijuana — now available by prescription in 13 states — plays down the dangers of habitual use.
“We need to be very mindful of what we are unleashing out of a Pandora’s Box here,” said Dr. Richard N. Rosenthal, chairman of psychiatry at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan and professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. “The people who become chronic users don’t have the same lives and the same achievements as people who don’t use chronically.”
So, trot out your marijuana smoking success stories, compare 'em to non-users. Maybe they are guitar profs in, say, Columbia University instead of MTSU?
There's ample reason Obama and his Drug Czar aren't too keen on legalizing pot.
This time, I'll wholeheartedly agree with him.
(Damn, no blockquotes in comments. Blogger, you suck~!)
Pot is not anymore addictive than tea, or porn, or french fries, probably less so. Yea, I used to smoke before I became a competitive athlete in middle age. So, my point is, I speak from experience, where you do not. One thing to note, since the pot has gotten stronger, it is a boon for those who do smoke, because only a few hits are required to achieve the same effect that smoking an entire joint used to require, thus cutting down on lung damage. Of course you wouldn't know this, being ignorant on the subject, unlike alcohol where you can literally die from an overdose, you can only get so high on pot, even if you smoke all day, you can only get so high.
ReplyDeleteAmericans live in a drug culture and a generally unhealthy lifestyle. Annually, tobacco kills: 435,000, (obesity) poor diet and physical inactivity kills: 365,000, alcohol kills: 85,000, adverse reactions to prescription drugs kill 32,000, deaths by marijuana overdose: ZERO.
In case you didn't know, pot is defacto legal in many places in the US. 13 states have recently legalized medical use of the drug. Now California is contemplating taking the next step – legalizing marijuana outright – in the hope that taxing marijuana sales could help ease the state’s latest budget crisis.
Since 1990, the primary focus of the war on drugs has shifted to low-level marijuana offenses. From 1990-2002, 82% of the increase in drug arrests nationally (450,000) was for marijuana offenses, and virtually all of that increase was in possession offenses. Of the nearly 700,000 arrests in 2002, 88% were for possession. Only 1 in 18 of these arrests results in a felony conviction, with the rest either being dismissed or adjudicated as a misdemeanor, meaning that a substantial amount of resources, roughly $4 billion per year for marijuana alone, is being dedicated to minor offenses.
Worth it to you? For a guy who voted for Bush twice who was an alcoholic and a AWOL cocaine user, probably so. That is the tortured logic and hypocrisy of conservatives.
Sheesh, man, did you not even read the NYT link I provided?
ReplyDelete“We need to be very mindful of what we are unleashing out of a Pandora’s Box here,” said Dr. Richard N. Rosenthal, chairman of psychiatry at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan and professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. “The people who become chronic users don’t have the same lives and the same achievements as people who don’t use chronically.”
No matter how many numbers you dish out about how 'good' MJ is compared to whatever else, the fact remains that MJ is not helpful to children, kids, America's youth. They are so easily distracted from the pursuit of success is life, of finding meaningful lives; pot promotes complacency and, yes, laziness. That's the tragedy of societal laissez faire acceptance of the use of MJ, alcohol, cigarettes, whatever; the average kid's mind is not able to overcome the desire to self-stimulate. And MJ is psychologically addictive.
We, as a society, need to give kids, young adults, every chance to succeed, and that means not giving up bad examples (as did Phelps, who is an obvious exception) to lead 'em astray.
For old codgers like you, me, anyone over 30, there's likely no harm done. There's no harm in allowing dying cancer patients to use, either I don't think. But we should at least agree to attempt to keep the stuff away from kids.