A Pot Smoker gets honest about why Not to legalized recreational Marijuana

OK. This won't be a long one. I believe whole-heartedly in the therapeutic value of cannabis. This is not about medical marijuana which should be legal (and is in many states) and is simply waiting for an archaic federal government to catch up. I have faith the federal government will catch up when the people that view marijuana correctly as a medicine and not as a counter culture threat against the establishment (a sentiment that should vacate with the baby boomers) run the country. That may be soon. Obviously, to deny any drug to people who need it (much less force them to substitute other synthetic drugs that are not as effective, have harsher side effects, and have been around for a thousandth of the time of marijuana) is criminal. To do so simply because you haven't figured out how to patent, monopolize and profit from it is simply evil (as in "the root of all..."). The is no question about its efficacy to anyone that has tried it for nausea. It's simply works better than anything else (as someone who suffered with irritable bowl for years, I've tried them all). It should be regulated and controlled like any other medicine. Period.

This is about the legalization of recreational marijuana, and the idea that it is no more harmful than alcohol or tobacco and therefore should be treated the same. To that I say, you're right. In a perfect world, starting from scratch, anyone who has tried marijuana (some 30 million or more Americans) knows it is no more dangerous than alcohol and all the numbers about addiction, deaths from overdosing, auto accidents, liver damage, uncontrolled behavior all favor marijuana as the safer intoxicant. No argument there. Most of the studies I've read state tobacco (especially as manipulated by cigarette companies) to be much more dangerous in terms of cancer, emphysema and lung disease. No argument there. All things being equal, it is the better choice.

However, all things are not equal. Some time ago, during tough financial times for Americans, marijuana was made illegal in order to try and help out-of-work Americans by arresting and deporting foreign workers (mostly Mexicans) under new drug laws, thus freeing up jobs which only a few years before Americans didn't want but now needed. With the help of propaganda from William Randolf Hurst (think Reefer Madness), marijuana was ridiculously demonized. Some years later, Nixon sees drugs as the easily arrestable commonality among the forces that opposed him and began the DEA and the drug war as we know it. Of course, if we are to believe the supreme court that the constitution provides the right to privacy, then any such law regulating what you can ingest in your own body would be obviously unconstitutional. Still, these travesties happened spurred by men who were never far from their scotch. Unfortunately, marijuana doesn't produce either the motivation, aggressiveness or the narcissism to want to go into politics so the choice was, in the end, inevitable.

It is, unfortunately, what has happened in the years since that has made recreational marijuana almost impossible to make appropriately legal. It is the tremendous industries that grew up around this illegal substance that make it irresponsible of us to think of destroying all the jobs and money created by illegal marijuana in these difficult financial times.

I have heard the argument that cannabis would be taxed and make a ton of money for the states, and while that argument has some merit as the taxes would be a substantial revenue stream, in the end we would cripple our economy and lose thousands upon thousands of jobs.

Stats from the US Dept. of Justice (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/enforce.htm) reports that in 2006, 13.1% of all arrests in the US were drug offences. Of those, 43.9% were marijuana related and 39% or 738,916 arrests were for marijuana possession alone.

Think about how many people's jobs are reliant those 3 quarters of a million arrests. There's the cops that arrest them, and the ones that process them, write them up and do all that paper work. When they go to court there is the judges, drug lawyers, prosecutors, stenographers, bailiffs, janitors, etc... Then there are the probation officers, the people who hold the mandatory NA classes and everyone else involved in post arrest. In fact, the money we pay for all these fines, court fees and lawyers is like our marijuana tax. Remove marijuana arrests and you remove the workload and revenue from 6% of our entire legal system. How many jobs would that cost?

And don't get me started on the jail system, one of the only growing private industries left in our current recession. How many wardens, guards, laundry workers, bulk food preparers, cot manufacturers and all the other industries employed by the prison system would lose their job if they, like any industry, essentially lost 6% of their business. How many jobs do the construction of new prisons create? To combat jail overcrowding in Santa Barbara, CA (where I currently live), construction of a small new 300 bed jail for $76 million has been proposed. Between 1990 and 2000 in the US we built over 245 new prisons. 25 per year! If all those juicy contracts were to dry up because we actually reduced the number of inmates, how many jobs would that cost?

You would also lose 90% of the drug testing industry, a 5.9 billion dollar a year industry with thousands of jobs.

As far as the money that would be made by legalizing cannabis, well that already exists though it may travel through a black market for a limited time. Our court fees make up for a good portion of what marijuana taxes could generate. With the ease of production (it is a weed after all), most of the marijuana smoked in America was grown in America. Gone are the days of importing the bulk from Mexico or Thailand. Most Mexican weed never gets past San Diego or Texas and Thailand is now importing their weed from Cambodia. The number one cash crop in California last year was Marijuana (grapes came in second, btw). That means that the "your funding terrorists by buying pot" is a ruse (though heroin, mostly from Afghanistan poppies is a different story). It also means that the vast majority of the money spent on pot in this country stays in this country paying rent, bills, buying food, medicine, cars, etc... and paying sales tax on each purchase. The money is in the system, whether it leaks out into the black market for a while or not.

So legalization would only produce some additional tax revenue, and would cost thousands of jobs in the mean time. These are hard working, good American people. Public defenders, judges, corrections officers, court employees. People who went to school and worked hard for their jobs, have families and lives and shouldn't have their jobs lost or replaced by low paying jobs in a pot coffee shop or cashier in a marijuana dispensary.

Is it morally reprehensible to put your own citizens in jail because they prefer a different, less harmful, more natural high than the one deemed appropriate by heavily lobbied lawmakers? Of course. Is it disheartening to find out the US imprisons a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world? Unbelievably so. We may not have a police state, but we have the highest prison population and rely on that fact for our economy.

The problem is that while the legal status of alcohol and tobacco shows the obvious hypocrisy, a substance is still needed to drive this drug war since, of people that use illicit drugs, 85% use only marijuana. If marijuana was legal it would be impossible to justify the 19.5 billion dollar budget the DEA sees annually with only 15% of the drug offenders left. The DEA, and everyone else who profits from the drug war, are not going to give up one cent of its ever expanding budget without a fight, and 19.5 billion can buy one hell of a fight. So, marijuana would have to be replaced by something just as prevalent. Alcohol prohibition, when attempted, gave rise to a more violent form of black market then the farmers and stoners that dominate the current pot prohibition. I mean, who would you want to arrest if you were a cop, a stoner or a drunk. Violent drunk is a term well deserved, violent pothead only exists in 1930's movies. So, there you go, what's better from a law enforcement or political perspective than a prohibition that generates millions of dollars, that supports thousands of jobs for the justice system, where the black market money stays within the country, and where the offenders don't fight back. Perfect. Well, if you a drunk anyway.

The real solution is not immediate legalization, but a reclassification of drug offenders in order to keep non-violent drug offenders away from our violent prisons. A restructuring of the drug laws in order to replace the prisons with therapeutic hospitals, the correction officer jobs with drug counselors and work our way slowly toward a better treatment of our marijuana smokers and their contribution to society and its economy. You can only skin a sheep once, but you can shear it many times. The pot smokers i know would pony up the money and go to mandatory treatment 50 times before giving up their relaxation and recreation. Now your talking recurring revenue, creating or replacing jobs with good paying jobs that require more education and at the same time taking away ammunition from the pro-legalization contingent. The US would get to save face for its failed international pot war by not legalizing, and we could still federally legalize medical marijuana without conflict. Good for the economy all the way around, good for the US standing in the world, good for the people that are sick and need it.

Then, eventually, we could work toward the more logical and morally agreeable decriminalization when our economy isn't spearheading downward like a skydiver with an umbrella. When we can, we need to work away from a prison nation to create jobs, and begin switching to new energy, technology and other sources of creating good jobs. Until then, my best advice is to smoke with discretion and take comfort in the realization your habit is contributing to the national well-being.

Just a thought. But then again, I might have been to stoned to think clearly.

how do you like your blue-eyed boy, mister death? The legend of the blue-eyed Quarterback

I find it amazing how it sometimes takes the oddest combination of events to bring into focus that which seems so obvious once you realize it. This happened to me some time ago while re-reading a favorite story for the first time in 15 years, while watching a highlights show on the NFL network. This type of multi-tasking isn’t a new phenomena for me; however, on this particular day I just happened to be reading An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, and watching a show on the top 10 Quarterbacks of all time on NFLNetwork when I came across my most innocuous yet interesting of theories with the reading of this line:

“The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them.”

Just about that time I looked up into the piercing eyes of Joe Montana, then Dan Marino, Brett Favre, Terry Bradshaw and said, “Check it out, they all have blue eyes!” Thus began the theory of the blue-eyed quarterback. Is it an important theory? Only if you’re a gambler or a NFL scout or coach. Still, the study of a general hypothesis like this could produce interesting results in the fields of medicine, genetics, sociology and human history. All it took was a co-affinity for Civil War literature and Football and wahlah!: A startling epiphany.

To all those in charge of player personel in the NFL: While a strong arm may win its share of games, if you want a Superbowl victory, or a Hall of Fame QB to make your career, find yourself a blue eyed boy.

The numbers are in your favor. Way in your favor. In fact, there is more truth the statement “Check it out, they all have blue eyes” then I ever imagined when saying it. It turns out that blue eyes are as important as a shotgun arm, mobility, release time, height or any other quarterback measurable.

Let’s look at some numbers and facts:

Blue is the second most common eye color behind brown.

“A 2002 study found the prevalence of blue eye color among Whites in the United States to be 33.8%” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_color) If you include other ethnicities the percentage drops considerably; however, since there has been obvious racial issues surrounding the position of NFL quarterback in particular, and since I wanted the numbers to stack up as either accurate or against my blue-eyed theory, I am restricting this statistical set to “whites in the US.”

The percentage of Superbowls won by a blue eyed quarterback is 79% (if we include the apparently Hazel eyes of Jim McMahon and Mark Rypien as brown).

The prevalence of blue eye color among Hall of Fame NFL Quarterbacks is an astonishing 91.3% (21 of 23, Warren Moon and Otto Graham the only exceptions) – add guaranteed blue-eyed Hall of Famers Brett Favre, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady and it becomes even higher.

Sociology can account for some variation in numbers, but it can not account for a variation this great (34% - 91%).

In fact, out the 42 superbowls played, only one featured two starting brown-eyed quarterbacks (superbowl 34, Kurt Warner vs. Steve McNair)

Assuming a 34% blue-eyed prevalence, the expected percentage of two blue-eyed quarterbacks playing each other in the Superbowl is only 11%. (That means that if every quarterback was a “white living in the US” we should still only see 5 of the 42 Superbowls played between two blue eyed quarterbacks.)

Percentage of Superbowls actually played between two blue-eyed quarterbacks: 52%

(22 of 42)

I recently read on ScienceDaily.com (January 2008) new research which supposedly shows that blue eye color is caused by a genetic mutation that occurred in a single individual about 6-10,000 years ago. All blue eyed people are related to a single ancestor! Maybe that ancestor had a riffle arm as well. Or maybe the mechanism restricting the amount of melanin (the stuff that causes color) in the iris also allows the eye to react to light and color differently creating better depth perception or ability to focus at high speeds or longer distance. I don’t know. I would like to though. I, personally, do not have blue eyes but would like to know what the world looks like through blue for a day.

Another interesting fact is that blue-eyes react differently to the drugs doctors use to dilate the eyes, showing an obvious physiological difference in how the eye functions and not just appearance. Blue eyes tend to dilate twice as fast and stay dilated longer than darker eye colors when exposed to the same dose of dilation drops.

An experiment with sharpshooters in the Canadian Army in 1812 showed target color played a large roll in accuracy, red being the easiest hit and grey being the hardest to hit. (http://www.militaryheritage.com/hamilton.htm) This smartly led to the change of many of the armies uniforms from red to gray (the original camouflage). Oddly enough, 3 of the 8 superbowls won by brown-eyed QB’s were Raiders QBs, the only grey team in the NFL. The opposing quarterbacks, all blue eyes, threw at least two interceptions in each of those games (perhaps due to a miss-judgment of the defenders depth, speed or position). Furthermore, Lester Hayes, an Oakland raider, holds the record for interceptions in a full-season with 18 including 5 in the playoffs. Is it cheating to play in camo?

Perhaps some of the modern day prejudices and knocks against black quarterbacks (think Rush Limbaugh) have been unknowingly due to eye color and not skin color. Just a thought.

So, how can one overcome this affliction of brown eyes and still win the Superbowl? You could be the one brown-eye to play another brown-eye in the big game like Kurt Warner. You could have a record setting defense and a hall of fame running back like Jim McMahon and Jim Plunkett, or the best O-line ever and opposing quarterbacks who disintegrate into throwing 4 picks each like Mark Rypien or Doug Williams (a coked up Timmy Smith doesn’t hurt), or the brown-eyed QB replacing the blue-eyed starter and squeaking one out by a missed field goal like Jeff Hostetler (playing perennial loser Buffalo with LT on your side doesn’t hurt either). So it can be done, just not without some help.

The Hall of Fame? Unless your name is Warren or you have a time machine…

Which brings us to the real questions of how blue eyes do what they do? Is it field of color, depth perception, speed of focus, or what? How did coaches and commentators not realize something so obvious? How did Eli beat Tom Brady? What would it take for Romo or McNabb to share the fate of the other brown-eyed superbowl victors?

I end with this poem by e. e. cummings about the best sharp-shooter of them all.

Buffalo Bill's

        defunct

               who used to

               ride a watersmooth-silver

                                        stallion

        and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

                                                         Jesus

        he was a handsome man

                             and what i want to know is

        how do you like your blueeyed boy

        Mister Death