Sunday, April 11, 2010

Dat ol' debbil weed

Straight from watching scenes of "Reefer Madness," Lee Anderson editorializes on "Crime and 'medical' marijuana" in the 29 March edition.
"A common argument in favor of legalizing marijuana is that legalization would reduce the big profits available from illegal sales of pot and therefore reduce drug-related crime.
"That claim appears to be on shaky ground in numerous states:
* Armed men recently broke into a Colorado site where "medical" marijuana was being grown legally. They bound the people inside, rifled through their belongings and made off with marijuana and guns.
* Three days later, five people invaded the home of a legal marijuana grower near Seattle and tried to rob him of his supply. The owner and a suspect were wounded in a shoot-out. But police say the victim, whose operation has been targeted for theft eight times, had nearly 400 marijuana plants -- far more than the 15 he is permitted under Washington's "medical' marijuana law. Ironically, four of the suspects are believed to have been smoking pot when they hatched the robbery plan.
* Another Washington man was beaten to death when he confronted a trespasser on land where he legally grew pot to 'treat' back pain.
* Meanwhile, California police have documented seven slayings linked to legal 'medical' marijuana in a one-year period, plus dozens of other crimes. In one case, a security guard was gunned down as he stood watch at one of Los Angeles' hundreds of 'medical' marijuana shops.
"'Whenever you are dealing with drugs and money, there is going to be crime. If people think otherwise, they are very naive,' Scott Kirkland, police chief in El Cerrito, Calif., told The Associated Press. 'People think if we decriminalize it, the Mexican cartels and Asian gangs are going to walk away. That's not the world I live in.'
"It seems the marijuana business and the crime associated with it are alive and well even in places where it is now legal."
Mr. Anderson is making the same mistake so many illogical people who are motivated by irrational religious prejudices have made: Ignore all other evidence and point to the bad stuff I don't like however nebulously associated it is.
People rob liquor stores, too; people hijack tobacco trucks.
Heck, people even steal newspapers, although that certainly is petty theft.
Do we, in those other cases, blame the stolen object?
Mr. Anderson's petty habit of putting quotation marks around the word "medical" in reference to marijuana just emphasizes his ignorant prejudice.
Even cocaine has medical uses.
Last I heard, the federal government, the very picture of schizophrenia, was giving marijuana to about half a dozen glaucoma patients.
A man I met several years ago told me he had been in a federal experiment testing whether marijuana would help his epilepsy. Parkinson's patients are given, in federal hospitals, a THC-derived medication.
Lots of things are bad for people and lots of things are bad for some people and not bad for others and there is no place for government to be involved.
Heck, it is very bad for one's health to read stupid and fascistic editorials. Should those editorials or editorializers be outlawed?

1 comment:

  1. One reader sent me a comment with some information about marijuana-oriented business, including friendly doctors and lawyers.
    I am not publishing his comment only because it's not relevant to this blog or the post and I know there people who confuse the desire for freedom with the desire to smoke or otherwise ingest certain substances.
    I have only the former.
    But I found it interesting there are entrepreneurs willing to step in to help fill a need.

    ReplyDelete