Who has been a member of the U.S. Marine Corps? There's a reason I ask this. Specifically, I would like to know when the USMC is chartered to patrol the American interior with shoot-to-kill orders.
* USMC soldiers patrolling in the south of Texas shot and killed Esquivel Hernandez, age 15, while he was tending sheep. The soldiers insist that Hernandez was heavily armed and fired deliberately at them. (Reality check: Hernandez was carrying a .22 rifle; more subjectively, many shepherds claim that randomly discharging a rifle into the air scares off potential predators that would otherwise thin the herd.) Neither DoJ or the military powers-that-be saw cause to prosecute a snipe to the back of a 15-year old American citizen working the family business on American soil.
Are we all familiar with
carrier-weight laws? These are the laws that create "irrefutable" evidence of how much of what a suspect was carrying. Actually, a few of the cases carried at
http://www.famm.org (Families Against Mandatory Minimums). One of my favorite offenses against liberty is the imprisonment of a New Jersey man for 25 years for the possession, essentially, of one of his girlfriend's Tylox.
* Couple is leaving a Grateful Dead show at the Meadowlands. Police are ignoring fleets of expensive cars drunkenly piloted through the parking lot, waiting to bust hippies returning to their VW's. Suspect is approached, stopped, and searched without cause (apparently, having long hair and dirty jeans at a Dead show is probable cause). Search turns up the following: Suspect is carrying less than 1 gram of marijuana; suspect has girlfriend's jacket tied around waist containing, among other items, one pill bottle with one prescription acetaminophen/coedine, and
her identification. It is a standard distribution law that illicit substances packed into more than one container must necessarily equal intent to distribute; prosecution needs no buyer, needs no other evidence, and the charge is irrefutable upon the possession conviction. Furthermore, considering the coedine weight of Tylox (50mg), carrier-weight laws become very important. Suspect was convicted of marijuana possession. Suspect was convicted of intent to distribute, for having marijuana in separate container from Tylox. The synthetic opiates in coedine were weighed as being the entire weight of the pill and of the bottle, and then counted as straight opium. The sentencing standard for this reflects possession of an ounce of street-grade heroin. Suspect was sentenced to 25 years in prison, according to a Minor In Possession citation when he was 17, and
mandatory minimum sentencing statutes. Where else in American justice is the law regarded in such a perverse manner?
Are you a profile candidate?
* You know, profiles. The cops say you look like someone or something, and they have probable cause to search your car, your home, your body cavities, and even draw blood if they so choose. A few things about profiles, whcih cover just about anyone in society.
--Are you black? There's a profile. White? Brown? Yellow? Red? Purple with chartreuse spots? There's a profile.
--Are you in an airport? Profiles exist to describe you as a drug dealer if you do any of the following: call a private residence from a public phone; call your city of origin from a public phone; call anyone on a celphone; fail to call anyone from the airport. (Attributes from several profiles.) There's a profile if you leave the airport by taxi; if you leave by bus; if you leave on foot; if you leave by private car. If you're coming from or going to a city regarded for "high drug traffic". There's a profile if you meet someone at the gate, at the luggage claim, at the curb outside.
--Are you on the road? There's a profile to search your car if it's messy; if it's too clean; if it's too new; if it's too old and dingy; if you eat fast food; if you
don't eat fast food.
--And that just names three separate criteria: who you are, if you're in an airport, and if you're on the road. There's plenty more in the profiling method.
I've seen a couple of statments generally pointing toward societal difficulties upon legalization of marijuana. To those, I would like to offer the following interesting parallel:
* Statistics can tell you anything you like. (As a neutral example, try global warming; the world got cooler over the last one-hundred years if you actually
include climactic shifts following volcanic eruptions--St. Helens, Pinatubo ... none of them are in the most popular figures.) In the case of societal conditions, statistics are rendered almost useless. To wit: An argument we hear about every four or so years from American Christian political institutions is that the crime-rate soared after we eliminated prayer from public schools. Perhaps, but as I said, much can be made of statistics. However, in the case of the War Against Drugs, we might remember that the UN has spoken its intention to eradicate species
Cannabis from the Earth. Until 1937, however, we lived in close proximity to this plant, which grew
wild in many places around the world. I might suggest, according to the prayer-in-schools model, that the crime rate, public morality, and so forth, have all gone to hell since we started removing ourselves from species
Cannabis.
Someone mentioned availability like basil. Ah, Tab (sorry, I had to look it up). Just a couple of points, because even the stoners wonder what will happen when the Green Wave is restored to its proper place in society. But:
* We can make health effects a different point of argument (I'm persuaded toward minimal-damage theories, namely because of the 1972 BoN report to Congress). But what about mind-altering drugs that
are as easy to get as basil? How many people
wouldn't be whining at you every day if they weren't addicted to caffeine? How many miscommunications, industrial accidents, and so forth, might have been prevented if one's mind wasn't schizing out for coffee? What about nicotine? I've seen people fired from their jobs on the grounds that their nicotine-jonesing boss didn't have the patience to administrate a simple miscommunication.
Anecdotal points:
* I once worked on the first floor of an office situated amid a shipping yard. The drug policy there was such that if ... If a forklift driver were to accidentally lose control of his rig and send it through the wall so that I was horribly injured at my desk without ever knowing what events were unfolding behind me, and on the other side of a wall ... I would have to prove myself drug-free before the company will A) not contest a Work Comp claim, or B) pay the medical expenses on my immediate injuries. Hell of a compassionate policy, obviously devised by people with deep social consciences
. Actually, to be honest, I know the guy who wrote the policy. His opinion on work comp was that if the guys sailing the Bering Strait needed money to pay for their injuries, they shouldn't be sailing in the first place. Of course, that's a familiar psychology to me, but I won't generalize it any more than the implication I've made by including it.
* Seattle police will let any publicly-permitted event run long,
except .... Hempfest. In that case, they don riot gear, grab their tear gas, and surround the cite starting a half-hour before the scheduled event end (8pm, according to some bizarre local law that allows whoever permits such events to arbitrarily proscribe the hours; but that time only for Hempfest.)
* King County sheriffs, unfortunately, broke a long-standing claim that pot hadn't killed anybody in X number of years. Apparently, someone shot a sheriff during a raid. Poor guy apparently died for nine ounces of marijuana, which means the fifteen pounds of street-ready methamphetamine, and the crank-lab which occupied multiple rooms of the house were probably irrelevant to the bust.
* Asprin is a more likely drug to accidentally kill you than marijuana.
* Why are the noble anti-drug lobbyists always associated with companies whose products would compete with something pot has to offer? (Timber/paper, cotton, fuel, pharmaceutical) Along this note, it's important to mention that Herer, in
The Emperor Wears No Clothes includes a reprint of a magazine article describing an automobile built entirely from hemp components--including the engine block and other mechanical parts.
* Does marijuana
cause juvenile disruption, or does it exacerbate pre-existing conditions?
* For all I've ever heard about evil, exploitative drug dealers, they're only common in my circle
if you buy large amounts from them to sell. I've had a few goofy, arrogant dealers ... but their customers go away quickly, so it's kind of like retail in that sense. But by and large, until you're spending $500 a pop on your quantity, I've never met a "Jacques Renault" (
Twin Peaks) marijuana dealer. Of course, it's harder to exploit potheads than it is tweakers, railers, or junkies.
* Why are DARE grads statistically more likely to have drug problems than their "uneducated" peers?
* My favorite anti-pot rhetoric ... from Harry Anslinger, ca. 1937, speaking before the U.S. Congress: "Marijuana is not dangerous in the way a cornered rattlesnake is not dangerous." Or, when he claimed that marijuana was all of the danger and chaos or opium (Mr. Hyde) with none of the pleasant (Dr. Jekyll) attributes of opiates.
* My favorite pro-marijuana rhetoric: "God made it. I grew it. That settles it."
thanx,
Tiassa
PS--I'm sober right now, and at work. But it's ok. I was always this lazy, even before I started toking.
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Take a side you say, it's black and gray. And all the hunters take the hunted merrily out to play. We are one, you say, but who are you? You're all too busy reaping in the things you never sown. And this feast must go on and on and on .... Nobody gives a damn. (Floater; "Beast")
