HAPPY 4/20 EVERYONE!!!

Well it's time for my annual rant against the "drug war." I don't understand why we are wasting billions of dollars on a "war" we can't win. All we're doing is creating drug cartel billionaires. I have a real problem with the government telling people what kind of substance they can use. Using drugs is not the most healthy choice, to be sure. But, if drugs are illegal because they're unhealthy, then let's take this to its logical conclusion. That cigarette you're puffing? That will be 3 years in jail if you get caught. How about that Big Mac? And alcohol? Oh, I forgot, they tried that once already and we know how that ended.

Now, before you get the idea that I'm typing this while I'm smoking a crack pipe and shooting heroin, I want to make it clear that I don't approve the use of drugs, with one exception. I just don't think it's the government's business if someone wants to ruin his/her life smoking crack. All the legal hassles in the word couldn't save Whitney Houston from being a skanky crack ho. She had to get tired of it herself, which she apparently has now done. YOU GO GIRL!

But this is 4/20. I don't want to talk about crack, heroin, lsd, crytal meth, etc. Those are all terrible drugs, especially tina, and I would always discourage someone from trying any of them. What I don't understand is our government's obsession with marijuana. I don't consider marijuana a "drug" in the same sense as the ones listed above. All of those drugs are manufactured in some way. Mary Jane grows naturally. God put it here for a reason. Hell you could have some growing in your back yard right now.

We used to be much more enlightened about these things. When I was in college reefer was freely smoked in the dorms, with the use of a wet towel at the bottom of the door. Many cities had decriminalized pot use. Hell, when I was a student in Ann Arbor, one could get high just walking down the drag from all the pot smoke coming out of the bars. It was a $5 fine, if the cops even bothered to write you a ticket at all. I read somewhere recently that when Richard Nixon was president, over 75% of the drug budget went to treatment of drug addicts.

But somewhere along the way, that all changed. Today, most of the government's drug budget is spent on enforcement, throwing people in jail. Marijuana became this terrible drug. They couldn't pin anything bad specifically on pot, so they had to call it a "gateway drug." Bullshit it is. No one I know who uses pot has ever had a sudden urge to become a crack ho.

Every other country in the civilized world treats drug use as a medical problem. Treatment is the option for drug addicts, not jail. Personal use of marijuana is usually not a crime at all, or a small fine at most.

You know, it just occurred to me that I use that "every other civilized country" a lot. It makes me wonder if I should even consider the United States a civilized country anymore. Our drug laws are more in tune with countries like Indonesia and Pakistan than they are with Europe.
Of course, so are our capital punishment laws and many others.

I haven't even mentioned the medicinal benefits of marijuana, which our government denies as strongly as they deny UFO's or that there was more than one shooter in Dallas. And the ultimate proof of their lies and hypocrisy is the fact that there are American citizens receiving free marijuana cigarettes from the government TODAY. Yes there are. In the 1970's there was a medical marijuana project sponsored by the US government. The government grew weed, harvested it, and gave it to patients whose conditions could be helped only by marijuana. The government decided that marijuana was bad, but the program is still in place for those who were already in it. I saw a documentary on this a few months ago. They interviewed a guy who gets tumors all over his body. He has to smoke something like 15 doobies a day. And they're supplied free BY THE GOVERNMENT. And it's perfectly legal for him to smoke. In fact, they interviewed him on the steps of the capitol building in Washington, while he was smoking a doobie.

We KNOW there a medical benefits to marijuana, and the government refuses to acknowledge it. Could it be they are in the back pockets of the pharmaceutical industry? I think so. We know marijuana helps glaucoma, and wasting from AIDS, among other things. Hell, just last week i saw a news article that said they just discovered that people who smoke pot are less likely to develop Alzheimer's in later life. Something about the THC interfering with the plaque that forms in the brain. Well I guess I can strike that disease of my list of things to worry about :) Hell, pass me the doobie!