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talkpolitics2014-01-18 03:24 pm
paft.livejournal.com) wrote in talkpolitics2014-01-18 03:24 pm
"Play Faster! Play FASTER! PLAY..."(maniacal laughter) "FASTER!"
It's interesting to observe, as time goes by, the rise and fall of horrible crazes that cause later generations to shake their heads in wonder at the inhumanity and dumbness of their ancestors. The Drug War is one of these. I can remember the insane anti-drug lectures and films I sat through in high school, showing the deadly effects of "Mary Jane" or "Grass." You could always hear the scare quotes as the narrator attempted to communicate with us in our own kooky teen lingo. There was the film that said airily of some football player being offered a joint by Maynard Krebs, "Oh, he was no angel, but he'd never done anything as hard as 'grass.' Just occasional beer and barbituates the night before a test." (Sounded to me like the guy offering him a joint was doing him a favor.) I remember the films on LSD use that made it look so much more interesting than it actually was. The one about the tripping hippie girl in San Francisco biting into a hot-dog, hearing it scream, and opening it up to find a bloodied troll doll set me up for some serious disappointment.
I can also remember the "scared straight" program we were shown in our high school auditorium, where some poor convict was trotted out to tell us about being gang-raped by his fellow inmates after he'd been sent to prison for holding a baggie of weed. This while prison officials sat nearby nodding their approval. If anyone wants a hint about how prison-rape became so endemic and tolerated, maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with a generation being raised on the notion that sexual abuse was a vital and acceptable penalty for using ****DRUGS****.
"Educational" programs about drugs did an admirable job of so badly wrecking their credibility with students that valid warnings about harder drugs may have gone unheeded. Why believe that heroin can wreck your life when the same person telling you this is invoking pot-fueled axe-murders?
So now, we seem to be getting over it to the extent of having sensible discussions about legalizing pot. Re-runs of '80s and '90s era cop shows are already beginning to feel a bit clammy and weird when they portray drug dealing and drug use as indefensibley heinous crimes. Nancy Grace, however, remains clueless on the issue as her weirdly retro rant on pot indicates. She's against pot legalization because of:
People on pot that shoot each other, that stab each other, strangle each other, drive under the influence, kill families, wipe out a whole family...
I especially like the venom she injects into the name "Mason TUVERT, Communications director of the Marijuana Policy Project." The level of projection from Nancy and her guest as they denounce the very calm and patient Mr. Tuvert as "thin-skinned" is staggering.
To those of you under the age of thirty -- welcome to my world as a high-school and college student. What you're seeing here was par for the course in most televised discussions about drugs back then when someone attempted to inject a little sanity into the mix.
Look, like any drug, from alcohol to caffiene, Marijuana can be abused. I knew a guy who qualified as a "pot head," just as I've known people who qualify as drunks. Does anyone still believe, however, that throwing pot-smokers in jail does anything to fight drug abuse or help addicts? Does anyone imagine it does anything other than make criminals rich and feed our out-of-control prison industry?
There can, of course, be only one conclusion to this OP:
*
I can also remember the "scared straight" program we were shown in our high school auditorium, where some poor convict was trotted out to tell us about being gang-raped by his fellow inmates after he'd been sent to prison for holding a baggie of weed. This while prison officials sat nearby nodding their approval. If anyone wants a hint about how prison-rape became so endemic and tolerated, maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with a generation being raised on the notion that sexual abuse was a vital and acceptable penalty for using ****DRUGS****.
"Educational" programs about drugs did an admirable job of so badly wrecking their credibility with students that valid warnings about harder drugs may have gone unheeded. Why believe that heroin can wreck your life when the same person telling you this is invoking pot-fueled axe-murders?
So now, we seem to be getting over it to the extent of having sensible discussions about legalizing pot. Re-runs of '80s and '90s era cop shows are already beginning to feel a bit clammy and weird when they portray drug dealing and drug use as indefensibley heinous crimes. Nancy Grace, however, remains clueless on the issue as her weirdly retro rant on pot indicates. She's against pot legalization because of:
People on pot that shoot each other, that stab each other, strangle each other, drive under the influence, kill families, wipe out a whole family...
I especially like the venom she injects into the name "Mason TUVERT, Communications director of the Marijuana Policy Project." The level of projection from Nancy and her guest as they denounce the very calm and patient Mr. Tuvert as "thin-skinned" is staggering.
To those of you under the age of thirty -- welcome to my world as a high-school and college student. What you're seeing here was par for the course in most televised discussions about drugs back then when someone attempted to inject a little sanity into the mix.
Look, like any drug, from alcohol to caffiene, Marijuana can be abused. I knew a guy who qualified as a "pot head," just as I've known people who qualify as drunks. Does anyone still believe, however, that throwing pot-smokers in jail does anything to fight drug abuse or help addicts? Does anyone imagine it does anything other than make criminals rich and feed our out-of-control prison industry?
There can, of course, be only one conclusion to this OP:
*