In the Arena

Tune In. Turn On. Drop Dead.

A year ago, I columnized in favor of legalizing–and taxing–marijuana. I proposed this as a rare gift from us Baby Boomers to our children: if we went stoned into that good night, there’d be a lot less kvetching about our aching backs and reflux and incontinence. We might make fewer needless, self-involved trips to the doctor, thereby solving the health care crisis. It might also put a significant dent in the budget deficit. I proposed the slogan above as our battle cry.

Well, big surprise: marijuana use is increasing among the elderly. We are in the process of a back-door legalization, sweeping from the libertarian west to the east. Newspapers have begun to hire marijuana critics.

The fight goes on. The dream will never die.

Related Topics: marijuana, Uncategorized
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  • kbanginmotown

    …now if we can just remember where we left the d@mn petitions everybody signed!!1!
    .
    (h/t George Carlin, Toledo Window Box, 1974)

  • square1

    Well, big surprise: marijuana use is increasing among the elderly.

    Correction: Pot smokers are getting old.

  • Exiled_At_Home (formerly Neo)

    Hear! Hear!

  • grape_crush

    C’mon; someone born in, say, 1946 isn’t that old…
    .
    …right, Joe?

  • mortalfool

    The trouble with legalizing pot is that it gives a message to our children that we think it is a good idea…which leads to more potheads.

  • http://elvisberg.wordpress.com Elvis Elvisberg

    There is no rational reason to believe that marijuana should be illegal and alcohol should be legal.
    -
    There is no reason to believe that the embargo on Cuba is doing any good or that it’s necessary. There is no reason to believe that cutting taxes increases revenues. There is no reason to believe that the US should pay twice as much per capita for health care than the rest of the planet, for worse results. There is no reason to believe that the French are wrong about nuclear power, and that it can’t be a large part of our energy sources.
    -
    There is every reason to believe that marijuana will be illegal for the foreseeable future.

  • Tom in The Swamp

    Did you intend to make a point?

    I mean, grandparents nonverbally telling their grandkids pot is okay is sure not going to make it look cool and attractive.

    And frankly, given the general hostility I see in the world, we could use a few more potheads.

  • http://elvisberg.wordpress.com Elvis Elvisberg

    Then let’s have the state ban alcohol, adultery, potato chips, cigarettes, and ice cream. If they’re legal, that sends the message that they’re ok, and leads kids to do all those things.

  • shepherdwong

    There are actually two problems that will keep marijuana illegal (three if you count the fact that it would be a tacit admission by the government that it was wrong and unjust to have prosecuted millions of US citizens for the possession of innocuous contraband).
    .
    One, there is no corporate business model for getting rich on legalized marijuana; it’s simply too easy and cheap for people to produce it themselves – compared to say, a good bottle of single-malt scotch or triple-distilled vodka. That also undermines the tax revenue argument.
    .
    The other reason is that marijuana makes people thoughtful, introspective and passive, which is a terrible drug for society based on competition for resources, authoritarianism and class oligarchy. Alcohol, the drug of mind-numbing, aggression and self-deception is a much better recreational drug, from our corporate masters’ self-interested viewpoint.

  • dunedweller

    “Newspapers have begun to hire marijuana critics.”

    Interesting way to save the industry… It could work!! (someone exclaims while exhaling a huge cloud of smoke)

  • afguy

    Yeah, we’ve been telling them sex before marriage was not a good thing for years. Has really worked here in Ky, let me tell you.
    .
    Wanna talk to your kids about the “birds and the bees”? Bring a notebook and pencil with you to take notes with… not for them, for YOU!
    .

  • afguy

    One, there is no corporate business model for getting rich on legalized marijuana;
    .
    Yep. It’s a b!tch when the corporate accountants keeps forgetting the password to the payroll software.

    .
    Or where, exactly, they work…

  • kathy

    I’m a sometime caregiver for an elderly woman in chronic excruciating pain, trying to find the balance point between narcotic loopiness and cognitively alert suffering; I wish I could give her some pot.

    On the other hand, in Burlington we just had a stoned 20 yr old run head on into another guy, paying no attention to which side of the road he was on, killing them both, at mid-day. His THC level was 14.1nanograms/ml. At first everyone thought he must have been texting, because it didn’t make sense that he was paying so little attention to the road. I’m not excited about seeing more of this sort of thing

  • http://elvisberg.wordpress.com Elvis Elvisberg

    kathy– It’s not clear to me that legalization would result in an increase in driving under the influence of THC. Some youths chose to smoke the blanketly illegal, and thus unregulated, drug of marijuana because it’s harder to get ahold of alcohol.
    -
    Now, that’s just anecdotal, the broader picture could be very different.

  • sacredh

    It’s also possible that it’s just the America spirit of “can do” at work. If they won’t pass health care reform for us, we’ll just take it upon ourselves to come up with something that works.

    Rollllllllllllllllll another one. Just like the other one.

  • sacredh

    I almost cried when they came out with remote controls for the tv. That’s the closest I ever came to believing that God existed.

  • Exiled_At_Home (formerly Neo)

    Don’t bogart that joint, strike a match and light another one.

  • kbanginmotown

    Health Care Reform we really neeed,
    Obama’s gotta kick that…
    …ssssssssssssssp.
    ::cough::
    jack@ss Reid…
    …pheewwwwwwwww…
    ::cough::

  • shepherdwong

    “…in Burlington we just had a stoned 20 yr old run head on into another guy, paying no attention to which side of the road he was on, killing them both, at mid-day. His THC level was 14.1nanograms/ml. At first everyone thought he must have been texting, because it didn’t make sense that he was paying so little attention to the road.”
    .
    This is actually a shockingly common accident – a head-on collision after crossing the center line of a two-lane rural road in broad daylight – and one of the biggest causes of fatal crashes.

  • jcapan

    Shorter Joe Klein,

    Ex-hippie, wrote about Woody Guthrie, still smokes herbs: excellent cover for estab. spokesperson

  • anon76

    I disagree Elvis- for once state’s rights seems to be a good thing. Montana has told the Federal Gov’t that it won’t prosecute (Montana has legalized medicinal marijuana), and the Obama administration has signaled that it won’t pursue the matter. In the meantime, more and more people are getting medical marijuana cards- including the (Republican) mayor of my hometown. As far as I’m concerned, the foreseeable future is here, and (at least in a libertarian state like Montana) marijuana is de facto legal.

  • anon76

    It turns out that Joe Klein is a very unserious DFH. Someone go tell Broder.

  • apollyon07

    Yes please. I have to go to court pretty soon for a marijuana related case. It’s going to take up time and money and will almost for sure be dismissed. What a GREAT use of the taxpayer’s money.

  • sacredh

    I hope you get off scott free apollyon07.

  • square1

    Yeah, we’ve been telling them sex before marriage was not a good thing for years.
    .
    Good God! Why would you tell them that?!?

  • sacredh

    I might be a bad parent, but I’ve been telling my son that sex in public isn’t cool.
    .
    Too strict?

  • afguy

    Good God! Why would you tell them that?!?
    .
    At least TRYING to slow them down, I guess.
    .
    Otherwise, they’d make a pair of rabbits blush…

  • afguy

    sacredh: define “sex in public”…
    .
    Top of teacher’s desk? Front steps of high school during hours? Going at it during half-time at the football game?
    .
    Nah, I think you’re doing it about right.

  • afguy

    Why, apollyon07, you slacker, you…
    .
    Good luck with court.

  • sacredh

    afguy: I define sex in public as anyplace where there is more than one person that can criticize you.

  • Exiled_At_Home (formerly Neo)

    I’m shocked that I’ve never been in your situation, Apollyon. Best of luck!

  • sacredh

    Here’s some free legal advice. Tell them that you smoke because of chemotherapy. Just don’t mention that the chemicals are psychedelics.

  • formerlyjames

    Great post Mr. Klein. I was one of those in my generation who found mj to be offensively noxious. Cramped my social life considerably. Wish I had found tobacco as offensive. Although i have previously rejected it, I will certainly reconsider if glaucoma, cancer, cancer treatment nausea, or aids related illnesses occur. Only objection to the post…given the insanity over health care now, could medical mj at least be given tax exemption?

  • formerlyjames

    appolly, I will look the other way from your slightly conservative bent (whatever that means), and wish you well in your court case. I am exempt from jury duty because I served last fall, but I live in Williamson Co., not Travis, so I probably could not have helped, but I think you need to go to a jury. You will find a sympathetic jury in Travis for sure.

  • formerlyjames

    apolly, I am a klutz, but I offered my observation in the wrong place up at # 9.3. Don’t take a plea, go to trial.

  • apollyon07

    thanks guys. It’s just for possession (I only had about a gram on me). I’m fighting it because the cops involved did several legally questionable things…including what was in my opinion an illegal search. And people thought I hated cops before…
    .
    As for going to trial, my lawyer said he would look into it and determine whether that’s the right way to go or not. FJ: unfortunately the “violation” occurred not in Travis County but in Collin County, where they are much stricter. Had I been in Dallas or Austin I’m sure they would’ve at most given me a ticket. sacredh- I think I’ll consult my lawyer first before using that defense :)

  • sacredh

    apollyon07: Seriously, I wish you the best of luck. My partying days are far behind me, 30 years, (except for one night during Mardi Gras in New Orleans when I was so drunk that I didn’t even realize that I was hitting on one when it got passed around). Even that was a dozen years ago. I wouldn’t worry about having an arrest. I’ve been arrested seven times (all for fun stuff) and it never stopped me from being the upstanding member of my community that I am today.

  • sacredh

    As an aside, don’t hate the cops. They’re just guys doing their job. I even became close friends with one that used to arrest me. It finally dawned on me that if I invited him to the parties and supplied the women that I was home free.

  • http://elvisberg.wordpress.com Elvis Elvisberg

    Sorry to hear it, apollyon07. Can’t be fun to go through. Hang in there, and best of luck bringing it all to a conclusion.

  • richinnj

    The movement is only 20 years too late. ;)

  • apollyon07

    mortalfool, enjoy perpetuating your fear of a very soft drug, while several states that are monstrously in debt could use legalization to reap loads of tax money.
    .
    Especially when people are gonna do it anyway.

  • apollyon07

    thanks Elvis, I’m not really worried about it anymore, at worst I’ll get deferred adjudication. It mainly just sucks to get burned by a law (and general policy) that you think shouldn’t be in place. Especially considering certain countries, states, and areas treat said policy with wide variation.
    .
    Holy sh!t Sacred, 7 times? Man I wanna party with you! And I don’t really hate cops as an institution, it’s just the area I grew up in (lived in Plano until college), the cops were especially hard on young people (say, age 15-24). There’s no serious crime so they like to pick on high school and college kids. Cops in Dallas and Austin have better things to do. And the two guys involved with me on this one made it unnecessarily difficult and degrading, plus conducted what I think was an illegal search. I only hope I can see their faces when it gets dismissed because of their mess up and me asserting my 4th amendment rights. That would be sweet.

  • apollyon07

    Kathy, I don’t think many people think that the public should be allowed to consume marijuana and then drive. Why not just treat it like alcohol? Establish a legal age of consumption (18 or 21) and then make it a crime to drive while under the influence of it. Is it fair to keep enforcing nonsensical drug laws because there are irresponsible users?
    .
    America has overly restrictive laws when it comes to consumption but lax laws when it comes to driving under the influence, IMO.

  • Ike Jakson

    What a way to do it, Joe. How does it feel?

    http://ikejakson.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/happy-hour-for-joe/

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