Author Topic: Reefer Madness, the Next Generation  (Read 2739 times)

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Offline EasyAce

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Reefer Madness, the Next Generation
« on: July 24, 2018, 03:32:28 am »
Legal pot proves no big deal, in Nevada and elsewhere. A harrumphing New Jersey Democrat raises old terrors anyway.
By Yours Truly
https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/community/reefer-madness-the-next-generation-GUyiMEQjXEOAtbBe6uRAbA/

If you don't count the periodic scolding from the nation's attorney general, who thinks he's a qualified physician in hand with being an underqualified law enforcement official, it seems like only yester-century that marijuana provoked hysterics able to square tall circles in a single bound. A little over a year ago, the state in which I live and work, Nevada, legalised marijuana all the way to recreational availability.

And a funny thing happened when it did---nothing.

The sun still arose. The summertime heat still remained enough to tempt the energy saving cooking of breakfast on the driveway surface. The slot machines in the casinos continued to chime, jingle, jangle, explode, and squeal. The Fremont Street Experience continued to host its assorted demimonde buskers in their assorted states of dress (or undress, as the case might be). And there was no appreciable intrusion from the high to the streets. Nevada did not become a Cheech & Chong reality show.

There were also no unduly swollen increases in the incidences of driving while intoxicated. In fact, it seems the opposite happened. From marijuana's full Nevada legalisation (1 July 2017) through 1 May 2018, according to the state Department of Public Safety, traffic deaths fell by 33 from the toll of July 2016 through May 2017. The cynic might suggest Nevadans simply don't have the kind of predispositions to mayhem that infuse larger populations, but the evidence is at least as powerful as a pot smoke.

Nevada's tax collectors partied hardily, too, if you'll pardon the expression. From 1 July through 31 December 2017, according to the Las Vegas Sun, legal marijuana provided over $35.9 million, thanks to the marriage of a fifteen percent wholesale tax for medical and recreational marijuana and a ten percent excise tax on the recreational stuff. The wholesale tax proceeds go to pay for state and local governments' regulation of the pot business, presumably, with what remains going to the state's distributive school fund; the excise tax proceeds go into the state's (don't laugh) Rainy Day Fund.

Perhaps the only noteworthy thing about Nevada's plunge out of the War on Drugs, Marijuana Front, was that for the first two weeks or thereabout of the legal dispensaries' openings, the lines to get in even in the dead of night (if it's not a stretch to say Las Vegas has any such thing as a dead of night) were long enough to provoke memories of waiting to see the exhibits and pavilions of the New York World's Fair 1964-65. The lines wrapped twice around the buildings at minimum, so it seemed when you passed them by.

Go into one and the first thing you'll be asked is for your identification. Just as you will when you slip into a convenience store to buy cigarettes. (Being carded is first degree flattery at my age.) Don't even think about bringing a minor to the dispensary with you; don't even think about buying a small haul and handing some to the minor agreeing to wait outside. There are casinos on the Las Vegas Strip whose security isn't that tight, even if the dispensaries' security are not terribly intrusive or obvious.

There are also no legal public facilities for having a toke or a bong outside your home, but it doesn't exactly seem to be as desperate a lacking as is, say, a coherent federal immigration policy. Tourists visiting Nevada can't have it in their hotel rooms, however, and all states that have legalised recreational marijuana are wrestling with ways to solve that issue, a dilemna illustrated last winter by Nevada state senator Tick Segerblom (D-Clark County): "This is what we spend millions of dollars on: Come here because you can’t do it back home. Then you say: Oh by the way, you can’t do it here." Unless you're visiting friends or relatives.

Whether New Jersey state senator Ronald Rice is aware of such things may be open to question. As his legislature ponders a bill to legalise recreational pot in the Garden State, the Newark Democrat talks like a man whose bucket list includes starring in a remake of Reefer Madness. Or some other such
vintage
propaganda film in which marijuana is
the demon seed liable to blow all remaining social decorum, ahem, up in smoke.

"(I)f we legalize recreational marijuana," Rice told NJTV, "right across the street from my office they're going to put up stores. They want to call them dispensaries. They're going to be stores that do retail selling of cupcakes with marijuana, candies with marijuana, sex toy oils with marijuana, lipsticks with marijuana—all those kinds of products that kids can get and people can get." The better to eat you with, granny.

"Kids can get," I get, though the official mischief committed on behalf of saving the kids would fill at least as many pages as does the incumbent volume of American federal and state laws making government the nation's biggest public nuisance. The dispensaries' security should and does dispose of the kids in the candy store (ho ho ho) readily enough. And the kids can't just window shop the dispensaries, either, because there's nothing in the windows to see; the wares for sale are recessed far enough out of clear window sight. These are not your friendly, neighbourhood bakeries with the calorie-swelling window displays.

"People can get," I don't get. The pot candies and cupcakes aren't liable to give anything past a small buzz, unless you wolf down a six-pack of the cupcakes or a twelve-portion candy bar in one sitting, if your sweet tooth is that insatiable. Isn't gnashing over pot-spiked erotic lubricants or lipsticks among consenting adults (married and otherwise) just a little modern reefer madness? (Fair disclosure requires that I say I've never seen a marijuana lipstick, but then I'm just not that kind of guy.) Assuming the THC dose is sufficient enough to make the difference, would we face an epidemic of kissing bandits trying to get the unsuspecting stoned?

All Sen. Rice omitted was the terror of pot in every chicken. The temptation here is to ask, with all due respect, "Senator, are you high?"
« Last Edit: July 24, 2018, 03:33:33 am by EasyAce »


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Offline AmericanaPrime

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Re: Reefer Madness, the Next Generation
« Reply #1 on: July 24, 2018, 07:32:48 pm »
I do not support legal pot, not because I have a moral objection, nor because I believe it is harmful physiologically. I actually believe it is superior in every way to alcohol. My argument is that it is extremely toxic to the culture of the country. We already have a disonnected, apathetic citizenry that isnt even replacing itself, the last thing we need is another is way for people to zone out without actually improving anything. I also take issue with the line that "pot is no big deal"given what's happened to our culture over the past 50+ years.

Between games, music, drugs, lack of religion, our culture is shot. The answer is definitely not to legalize drugs. We need educated and engaged citizens, not more of what we have now, a bunch of people sucked into the vortex of apathy.

That said, I could see medicinal uses under supervision being fine, but recreational?

Hell no, we've already gone too far as it is, unless we are just ready to say bleep it.
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Offline ABX

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Re: Reefer Madness, the Next Generation
« Reply #2 on: July 24, 2018, 07:51:46 pm »
I do not support legal pot, not because I have a moral objection, nor because I believe it is harmful physiologically. I actually believe it is superior in every way to alcohol. My argument is that it is extremely toxic to the culture of the country. We already have a disonnected, apathetic citizenry that isnt even replacing itself, the last thing we need is another is way for people to zone out without actually improving anything. I also take issue with the line that "pot is no big deal"given what's happened to our culture over the past 50+ years.

Between games, music, drugs, lack of religion, our culture is shot. The answer is definitely not to legalize drugs. We need educated and engaged citizens, not more of what we have now, a bunch of people sucked into the vortex of apathy.

That said, I could see medicinal uses under supervision being fine, but recreational?

Hell no, we've already gone too far as it is, unless we are just ready to say bleep it.

You know what we really need is more government involvement in all those things that are toxic to our culture. Be it music, video games, movies, alcohol, the internet, TV, fatty foods, autos, you name it.

Individuals just can't be trusted to make good decisions that are beneficial to the culture. We could use a lot more prohibitions like we have for marijuana.  In places that is illegal, drug crimes are at zero, there are no cartel or gang problems, we don't have job slackers, and you don't see junkies. On the other hand, where it is legal, you have all those things.



OR

Just the opposite of all that.

Offline AmericanaPrime

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Re: Reefer Madness, the Next Generation
« Reply #3 on: July 24, 2018, 08:10:00 pm »
You know what we really need is more government involvement in all those things that are toxic to our culture. Be it music, video games, movies, alcohol, the internet, TV, fatty foods, autos, you name it.

Individuals just can't be trusted to make good decisions that are beneficial to the culture. We could use a lot more prohibitions like we have for marijuana.  In places that is illegal, drug crimes are at zero, there are no cartel or gang problems, we don't have job slackers, and you don't see junkies. On the other hand, where it is legal, you have all those things.



OR

Just the opposite of all that.

This is why conservatives have "conserved" exactly nothing. Complete lack of out of the box thinking, just GOVERNMENT IS EVIL nonsense.
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Offline EasyAce

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Re: Reefer Madness, the Next Generation
« Reply #4 on: July 24, 2018, 08:21:12 pm »
Between games, music, drugs, lack of religion, our culture is shot.
Music?

Music???

Oh, the horror!

You can find good music anywhere you like, if you look. You don't have to chain yourself to today's radio; you don't have to take what large corporate media feeds in the name of music any more than you have to take everything burped out to you on massively purchased billboards or television spots as political gospel in campaign season.

You could even begin with yours truly, since I write most of the music my new band plays (we're trolling for gigs even as I write) . . .

Strawberry Seltzer*
Midtown
(These are just demos I made to give the band a rough idea of the songs; you don't want to shoot all your bullets when just demonstrating . . .)

Tell the government to keep its meathooks off its citizens' lives and doings until or unless one citizen would obstruct or abrogate another's equivalent rights. I'm pretty sure, too, that the disengagement of American citizens has very little if anything to do with marijuana or even other drugs, and perhaps everything to do with their knowing in their guts that American government is and has long enough been the nation's largest organised crime family thanks in large part to the concept that every last damn portion of life on earth requires political engagement or political resolution, a concept an unscrupulous government can exploit liberally, and has done so.

Someone wants to use pot? It should be entirely up to them and no skin off anyone's teeth until or unless a) they try coercing someone else to try or use it; or, b) they commit a crime while using it, in which case you punish the crime itself and send the message that just because you were high when you did it, you're not off the hook for doing it.

(For the record: Nevada's crime rate since pot was legalised all the way in 2017 has not risen appreciably because of legalisation, and you saw in my original essay where road deaths actually decreased since pot was legalised. And I haven't seen a community full of zombies since, either. Since the initial reception to the legal dispensaries over those first two weeks of July 2017, the dispensaries aren't even close to being the most popular or crowded stores in town, in either my Las Vegas or anywhere else in Nevada. The casinos still do about thirty times the business of a marijuana dispensary in any given hour. So do the supermarkets, those still open 24/7, anyway.)

Fair disclosure: I buy a twelve-piece bar of marijuana chocolate every so often, divided into twelve pieces much the same as a typical large Hershey bar. One small piece is far better than any other medication as a sleep aid, which is the main reason I eat them.

(* I was drinking a strawberry seltzer when I came up with that song a few nights ago, so I just gave it that name . . .)


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Offline Restored

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Re: Reefer Madness, the Next Generation
« Reply #5 on: July 24, 2018, 08:55:30 pm »
A bunch of hopped up kids kids will be listening to Swing music and worshiping Satan. There will be rampant Sloth...and Integration.
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Offline corbe

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Re: Reefer Madness, the Next Generation
« Reply #6 on: July 26, 2018, 09:39:25 pm »
   ANOTHER GREAT ONE @EasyAce I must have too stoned to realize this had been posted but my biggest disappointment is no one pinged ME!!!!!
No government in the 12,000 years of modern mankind history has led its people into anything but the history books with a simple lesson, don't let this happen to you.

Offline EasyAce

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Re: Reefer Madness, the Next Generation
« Reply #7 on: July 26, 2018, 10:29:57 pm »
   ANOTHER GREAT ONE @EasyAce I must have too stoned to realize this had been posted but my biggest disappointment is no one pinged ME!!!!!
@corbe
Looks like I'll need a ping list for my periodic polemics. Consider yourself a charter member!


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

Offline EasyAce

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Re: Reefer Madness, the Next Generation
« Reply #8 on: July 26, 2018, 10:31:20 pm »
A bunch of hopped up kids kids will be listening to Swing music and worshiping Satan. There will be rampant Sloth...and Integration.
@Restored
Would that they were listening to jazz. Real jazz. Or, classic rhythm & blues. Or, the vintage deep blues. Take arms like those up against the devil, and the devil is outnumbered. ;)


"The question of who is right is a small one, indeed, beside the question of what is right."---Albert Jay Nock.

Fake news---news you don't like or don't want to hear.

Offline corbe

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Re: Reefer Madness, the Next Generation
« Reply #9 on: July 26, 2018, 10:36:38 pm »
You can ping me to anything, anytime @EasyAce
No government in the 12,000 years of modern mankind history has led its people into anything but the history books with a simple lesson, don't let this happen to you.