http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/howie_carr/2014/01/now_we_re_all_dopesSunday, January 26, 2014
By:
Howie Carr
Marijuana makes you stupid.
Nobody wants to acknowledge the obvious fact, but that’s what this whole legalization debate is all about. That’s why most of the candidates for governor, of both parties, have come out against legalization, even if they have to obfuscate why they’re opposed to the Colorado-ization of Massachusetts.
After all, the pols can’t offend that pivotal ganja-American voting bloc, assuming they can remember to vote in November.
It’s left to comedians like Jay Leno Thursday night to poke around the truth:
“Doctors warn that pot smoking impairs young people’s thinking, which of course makes them much more likely to sign up for Obamacare.”
Speaking of which, is it a coincidence that America’s best-known marijuana smoker thinks there are 57 states, that they speak Austrian in Austria and pronounces “corps” as “corpse.”
And Barry was the brains of the Choom Gang.
Don’t flatter yourself, potheads — you’re not martyrs. No one wants to put you in jail. This isn’t 1971, and by the way, even in 1971, hardly anyone in Massachusetts was ever sent to the can for simple possession of weed.
The NSA is not tracking any pot smokers, and neither is the IRS. They’re too busy harassing the real enemies of society, like the Tea Party, and I don’t mean “Texas tea.”
No, the issue here is, when you legalize something, you get more of it. Think gambling, illegal aliens. It’s in everyone’s best interest, including the Cheech and Chong community, to minimize the number of people who are finishing life at home in their spare time.
It’s not that people who smoke weed go crazy, a la “Reefer Madness.” It’s that a lot of them stop going anywhere, except to the refrigerator.
If you smoke and it’s not a problem, good for you. Keep tokin’ up. You obviously have no problems maintaining your stash, and no one’s going to bother you.
Just ask Aaron Hernandez. He never got lugged until he started shooting people.
The “George-Washington-used-hemp-to-make-uniforms-for-the-Continental-Army-dude” crowd always claims that marijuana isn’t as dangerous a drug as alcohol.
That’s essentially what Obama said, and it’s true. But so what? Most stoners are also pounding down the Bud Lights big time, at least after working hours. And that’s a problem.
As Bob Dylan once said of combining alcohol and marijuana: “Like a fool I mixed them/ An’ it strangled up my mind/ An’ now people just get uglier/ An’ I have no sense of time.”
Exactly. And you can’t drive worth a damn either.
The libertarian position is that everyone has the unalienable right to get bleeped up. That was Ron Paul’s real platform all those years, not reining in the Federal Reserve.
The only “reserve” his voters cared about was the extra box of Twinkies out in the Volkswagen bus.
The defect with the Ron Paul argument is that we now live in a welfare state. If you decide to quit working and devote your entire stoned life to rolling the perfect joint and deconstructing the collected oeuvre of Jimi Hendrix and his Band of Gypsies, the taxpayers are now on the hook for supporting you.
I am a taxpayer. I protest. Millions of Obama voters are already leeching off me, they’ve got me working like a coal-mine pony. I need a little help here on the second shift.
Sorry dude, I know it’s a bummer, totally, but that’s the way life is — there’s always a lot of sticks, stems and oregano mixed in there with the buds.
