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Tag: marijuana

  • I didn’t know…

    “…marijuana use is associated with voluntary treatment admissions for addiction, fatal drugged driving accidents, mental illness and emergency room admissions.” So says Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske. Come to think of it, so is life.

    There’s more on Pete Guither’s blog.

    Regardless, thanks God we’re still safe from this reefer madness.

    I don’t think marijuana makes you crazy. But I’m started to suspect that being elected to high office does.

    If Obama is going to unpopular for being liberal… I just wish we actually were.

  • What do we do with all that weed?

    What do we do with all that weed?

    Explain this to me:

    In the past few weeks about 155 tonsof marijuana has been stopped from coming in from Mexico. Numbers of that magnitude tend to numb. I have no idea what 155 tons means. So I did some figuring. 155 tons is about 1,500 big men (or 3,000 very petite women). It’s about 1.3 times what the space shuttle weighs (at landing). It’s a lot.

    And, according to the magic elves at google, 155 tons is 4,960,000 ounces, or about an 1/8th of an ounce for every 6 adults in the USA.

    Can’t picture an eighth-of an ounce? According to some crack online research hereand here, 1/8 oz. is roughly equal to the amount of tobacco in 4 cigarettes (or 3 cigarettes whole). 1/8 oz of marijuana is more than enough to get a few people nice and high.

    Now keep in mind, 1) there’s a lot weed grown right here in the ol’ US of A, and 2) There’s a lot of weed still coming in from Mexico.

    So how much marijuana are we as a country smoking? The amount seems truly amazingly astronomical.

  • War on Drug Continues

    It didn’t surprise me that Prop 19 lost. I’m still amazed that it did so well and was taken so seriously. A lot of progress has been made over the past 10 years. I suppose only history will tell if we’ll look back on this as the high point (there was really no pun intended when I first wrote that) or whether it’s just a step down the path toward a better drug policy.

    Meanwhile, another secret tunnel was found from Mexico. It included 25 tons of the maryjane. English Aljazeerareports. And that’s on top of the 134 tons the other week.

    I say this in my best whiny Mike Bloomberg voice: “People, it’s the tunnels that make us less safe, not the drugs.” I don’t want people building tunnels under the border. But they will as long as we keep building walls on top of them and fighting “wars” against things and people from Mexico.

    Here’s a good story in the Christian Science Monitoron the tunneland one on the Latin American leaders and the failure of Prop 19. Here’s a good quote: “The two presidents who have come out strongly against legalization [in Mexico and Columbia] are presidents who have received a combined total of nearly $9 billion from the United States government.”

  • The Dream

    The Dream

    From Doonsbury.

  • Smoke and Horrors

    Smoke and Horrors

    Charles Blow of the New York Times write about drugs (and yes, that is his real name), specifically about the racial disparity in marijuana arrests. Some people just don’t seem to care, but it seems to be a fundamental issue about fairness in justice.

    Whites and blacks smoke weed at nearly similar rates (actually whites smoke more), and yet blacks get arrested for it far more often. This report reflects more good work by Queens College professor Harry Levine:

    From 2006 through 2008, police in 25 of California’s major cities have ar­rested blacks for low-level marijuana possession at four, five, six, seven and even twelve times the rate of whites.

    The City of Los Angeles, with ten percent of California’s population, arrested blacks for marijuana possession at seven times the rate of whites.

    These racially-biased marijuana arrests were a system-wide phenomenon, occurring in every county and nearly every police department in California. They were not mainly the result of individual prejudice or racism. In making these arrests, patrol officers were doing what they were assigned to do.

    Doesn’t that matter?

  • “I don’t want ’em caught!”

    Former Republican Governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson.