Tuesday, January 13, 2004
Pot or Not?
John Walters, the President's Drug Czar, said that today's marijuana has a THC level of 30%. That compares to the 1960's variety of about 1%. He also said one out of five accidents are caused by drugged-up drivers. And he said one of the greatest problems in fighting the drug war is that too many parents think smoking pot is no big deal. So, I decided to rethink this question. . . . . . . . . . (been thinking for a long time) . . . . . . . . ahhhhhhh.
I am a parent, and I will choose to think It (smoking pot) is a very big deal. Even if the 30% THC potency is for only the rich and the average street dope is 10% THC, I will think It a very big deal.
First, compare It to the cigarette industry. Every once in a while, Kools will come out with a buy-one-get-one-free or even a buy-one-get-two-free special. After years of not smoking, it's still hard to resist the ON-SALE aspect. And I believe the on-sale Kools are deliberately more tasty, more potent, more addictive, more of what a smoker craves. This is my fifth time quitting, and the only thing that keeps me from going back is the knowledge that they are manipulating me and I hate being manipulated more than I crave Kools.
In the Fifties, cigarette smoking was the bad-guy James Dean image. The pack of Camels went right along with the greasy hair and tightly pegged pants. Overtly sexy, overtly rebellious. Pot was barely there unless you were a musician or an inner city Cool Cat.
Then the Baby Boomers went to college, studied philosophy and history, and saw there were many sides to "truth." In the Sixties a small group of beatnicks became hippies, and part of the attraction of pot was its exclusivity to this cult. It was like a secret handshake for that small inner circle of people that held similar ideals (or music, of course) and it made a statement to the authorities. It said we didn't believe all the propaganda and lies they spewed during the McCarthy Era and the Cold War Era about war, society, poverty, racism, anything. We could define ourselves by our very peaceful Ghandi-like, idealistic views of a world that really could be as good as it should be -- not just the way it was. We searched for mind-expansion through chemistry -- ha ha ha, ho ho ho, hee hee hee, har har har, what a hoot! But we really took ourselves very very seriously.
Then the Seventies came. Every other guy started growing long hair, smoking pot, wearing bell-bottomed jeans and t-shirts hoping to partake in some "free-love". You used to be able trust that a hippy had the same standards and goals that started the movement. But in the Seventies, many of the guys with long hair were just racist, hate-filled red-necks that believed in war but were too cowardly to stand up and fight for what they believed in. It was very hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. To them, pot was just a replacement for, or more often, a companion to, beer.
The Eighties were even worse. The debutante had her coming out party and the I-Me-Mine Generation was implanted solidly into our society. Feel good, look good, have fun, get high, spend as much time and money on oneself as possible. Movers and Shakers. Oh, what a group! At least they gave us a strong economy. All the spending and wasting and using gave a job to everyone that wanted one. They went way past pot to coke and who knows what.
Did the Nineties calm down? It seemed to, at first, but maybe I just stopped looking. I was too busy raising kids. My son had a great group of computer friends that chatted on BBS's and came in the middle of the night to save a crashed hard drive so he could finish his homework. Life seemed good, until my daughter turned into a teenager. (Yikes!) By the Nineties, little kids smoked cigarettes AND pot, AND drank, AND snorted cocaine, AND had sex, AND AND AND. Never have a teenage daughter in the Nineties. It was horrible. I wouldn't even let her ride a bicycle or walk home from school -- I was so scared. So she spent her Saturday evenings in a nice drug-free coffee house (boy, was I naive).
I don't know if all these self-destructive behaviors are nature's plan to weed out the weak and feeble-minded, or if it's just another example of the mafia/drug cartel's business-as-usual feeding off the suffering of a stupefied humankind. Are we losing our most vulnerable, our gentlest fragile souls to an imaginary world of synthetic adventures and hallucinatory accomplishments? Or are we just sweeping aside the whiners who are unfit for reality anyway? Guess we need to get our minimum wagers from somewhere.
We have all seen the ex-hippies, the middle aged wrinkled balding children of the sixties with their fried brains and dysfunctional night vision meander through town still thinking they are cool. And cool is all that counts. To them. I guess John met one in Lansing just the other night.
And we've all seen the new hippies with their inept work ethic. I don't care how cool they think they are, I really resent having these stoners control any moment of my day. (Do you hear that little miss Why-Don't-You-Chill-Out?) Remember the commercial with the giggling surgeons passing a joint with one hand and a scalpel with the other hand and YOU are the one on the operating table?
It is very hard to recognize truth in this world of psychology-infested commercialism. Maybe it is "just pot" and it is only as bad as alcohol. It may be stronger, but one can smoke less?
No!
It is not "just pot," and either way, it doesn't matter if it is or is not "just the same" as drinking. This much I have come to realize.
Anytime you use anything to simulate or hallucinate a pleasant emotion instead of finding ways to actually be happy, focused, and satisfied, you are depriving yourself the opportunity to grow up, and to learn who you really are and what you can really do with this life. What is your real purpose? When you live out of reality, you accomplish nothing. You solve nothing. You become nothing. There is no way, and certainly no need, to solve a problem if you know you will feel better on Saturday Night with a toke or two. Instead of making your life better, you just learn to tolerate it. Is that what you want?
How about seeing a return of the sixties without the pot/booze/drugs -- groups of young people striving to make the world the way it should be, not just more and more the way it is.
That's what I want.
John Walters, the President's Drug Czar, said that today's marijuana has a THC level of 30%. That compares to the 1960's variety of about 1%. He also said one out of five accidents are caused by drugged-up drivers. And he said one of the greatest problems in fighting the drug war is that too many parents think smoking pot is no big deal. So, I decided to rethink this question. . . . . . . . . . (been thinking for a long time) . . . . . . . . ahhhhhhh.
I am a parent, and I will choose to think It (smoking pot) is a very big deal. Even if the 30% THC potency is for only the rich and the average street dope is 10% THC, I will think It a very big deal.
First, compare It to the cigarette industry. Every once in a while, Kools will come out with a buy-one-get-one-free or even a buy-one-get-two-free special. After years of not smoking, it's still hard to resist the ON-SALE aspect. And I believe the on-sale Kools are deliberately more tasty, more potent, more addictive, more of what a smoker craves. This is my fifth time quitting, and the only thing that keeps me from going back is the knowledge that they are manipulating me and I hate being manipulated more than I crave Kools.
In the Fifties, cigarette smoking was the bad-guy James Dean image. The pack of Camels went right along with the greasy hair and tightly pegged pants. Overtly sexy, overtly rebellious. Pot was barely there unless you were a musician or an inner city Cool Cat.
Then the Baby Boomers went to college, studied philosophy and history, and saw there were many sides to "truth." In the Sixties a small group of beatnicks became hippies, and part of the attraction of pot was its exclusivity to this cult. It was like a secret handshake for that small inner circle of people that held similar ideals (or music, of course) and it made a statement to the authorities. It said we didn't believe all the propaganda and lies they spewed during the McCarthy Era and the Cold War Era about war, society, poverty, racism, anything. We could define ourselves by our very peaceful Ghandi-like, idealistic views of a world that really could be as good as it should be -- not just the way it was. We searched for mind-expansion through chemistry -- ha ha ha, ho ho ho, hee hee hee, har har har, what a hoot! But we really took ourselves very very seriously.
Then the Seventies came. Every other guy started growing long hair, smoking pot, wearing bell-bottomed jeans and t-shirts hoping to partake in some "free-love". You used to be able trust that a hippy had the same standards and goals that started the movement. But in the Seventies, many of the guys with long hair were just racist, hate-filled red-necks that believed in war but were too cowardly to stand up and fight for what they believed in. It was very hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. To them, pot was just a replacement for, or more often, a companion to, beer.
The Eighties were even worse. The debutante had her coming out party and the I-Me-Mine Generation was implanted solidly into our society. Feel good, look good, have fun, get high, spend as much time and money on oneself as possible. Movers and Shakers. Oh, what a group! At least they gave us a strong economy. All the spending and wasting and using gave a job to everyone that wanted one. They went way past pot to coke and who knows what.
Did the Nineties calm down? It seemed to, at first, but maybe I just stopped looking. I was too busy raising kids. My son had a great group of computer friends that chatted on BBS's and came in the middle of the night to save a crashed hard drive so he could finish his homework. Life seemed good, until my daughter turned into a teenager. (Yikes!) By the Nineties, little kids smoked cigarettes AND pot, AND drank, AND snorted cocaine, AND had sex, AND AND AND. Never have a teenage daughter in the Nineties. It was horrible. I wouldn't even let her ride a bicycle or walk home from school -- I was so scared. So she spent her Saturday evenings in a nice drug-free coffee house (boy, was I naive).
I don't know if all these self-destructive behaviors are nature's plan to weed out the weak and feeble-minded, or if it's just another example of the mafia/drug cartel's business-as-usual feeding off the suffering of a stupefied humankind. Are we losing our most vulnerable, our gentlest fragile souls to an imaginary world of synthetic adventures and hallucinatory accomplishments? Or are we just sweeping aside the whiners who are unfit for reality anyway? Guess we need to get our minimum wagers from somewhere.
We have all seen the ex-hippies, the middle aged wrinkled balding children of the sixties with their fried brains and dysfunctional night vision meander through town still thinking they are cool. And cool is all that counts. To them. I guess John met one in Lansing just the other night.
And we've all seen the new hippies with their inept work ethic. I don't care how cool they think they are, I really resent having these stoners control any moment of my day. (Do you hear that little miss Why-Don't-You-Chill-Out?) Remember the commercial with the giggling surgeons passing a joint with one hand and a scalpel with the other hand and YOU are the one on the operating table?
It is very hard to recognize truth in this world of psychology-infested commercialism. Maybe it is "just pot" and it is only as bad as alcohol. It may be stronger, but one can smoke less?
No!
It is not "just pot," and either way, it doesn't matter if it is or is not "just the same" as drinking. This much I have come to realize.
Anytime you use anything to simulate or hallucinate a pleasant emotion instead of finding ways to actually be happy, focused, and satisfied, you are depriving yourself the opportunity to grow up, and to learn who you really are and what you can really do with this life. What is your real purpose? When you live out of reality, you accomplish nothing. You solve nothing. You become nothing. There is no way, and certainly no need, to solve a problem if you know you will feel better on Saturday Night with a toke or two. Instead of making your life better, you just learn to tolerate it. Is that what you want?
How about seeing a return of the sixties without the pot/booze/drugs -- groups of young people striving to make the world the way it should be, not just more and more the way it is.
That's what I want.
