Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Mollie Hemingway, Ed. ·
Jun 14, 2011 at 6:56am
From the Wall Street Journal today:
Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. has long sold weed killer. Now, it's hoping to help people grow killer weed.
One of the worst things about prohibition is how the marijuana trade is in the hands of thugs. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind seeing more Scotts Miracle-Gro in the business and less mafia and Frank Lucas.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
No, it's not the best lede ever, unless you just LOOOOve you some weed and the very thought just tickles your fancy for some unexplained reason. On its own, it's frankly a too-cute throwaway line.
Nov '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Noooo! If you people start growing your own weed south of the border, it will devastate the Canadian economy (particularly BC's). This article is from the Guardian - not always a reliable source - but it gives you a wiff of how important our (possibly) biggest ag product is....
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Ha! Well, I'm not a weed smoker but I'm definitely anti-prohibition.
May '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
Ha! Well, I'm not a weed smoker but I'm definitely anti-prohibition. · Jun 14 at 7:46am
So you're ok with people smoking weed and, say, driving around. Or being stoned at work. Hey, we can't prohibit any of these substances, right? People are going to do it anyways, so why not just make it all legal? We're clearly losing the war on drunk driving, and it's costing us too much to hire police to stop all those illegal drunk drivers. Let's just add another intoxicant into the mix and see how that helps.
Edited on Jun 14, 2011 at 7:52amRe: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Chris Deleon
So you're ok with people smoking weed and, say, driving around. · Jun 14 at 7:50am
Well, that's a separate issue than prohibition. But if you want to change the subject to that, that's fine. And I'm okay with people smoking weed and driving around. I grew up in Colorado so I saw it happen regularly.
I mean, they're super slow and overly cautious, which can be infuriating, but I think it's better to enforce particular driving standards rather than how many carbs or alcohol or weed you have in your system.
Sep '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
And I'm okay with people smoking weed and driving around.
How do you feel about someone smoking weed and phoning a long distance number to submit questions to 2 legal professors? I ate an entire bag of Oreos for breakfast and vacuumed my sidewalk.
Apr '11
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Chris Deleon
Or being stoned at work.
Edited on Jun 14 at 07:52 am
Alcohol is legal, but am I right in guessing your employer would fire you if you showed up to work drunk? Corporations banning their workers from using marijuana is different from the government banning marijuana.
Jul '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Pseudodionysius: And I'm okay with people smoking weed and driving around.
How do you feel about someone smoking weed and phoning a long distance number to submit questions to 2 legal professors? I ate an entire bag of Oreos for breakfast and vacuumed my sidewalk. · Jun 14 at 7:57am
That was the funniest thing I've read all day (though to be fair the day is young) Thanks for the laugh!
Sep '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Waynester
Pseudodionysius: And I'm okay with people smoking weed and driving around.
How do you feel about someone smoking weed and phoning a long distance number to submit questions to 2 legal professors? I ate an entire bag of Oreos for breakfast and vacuumed my sidewalk. · Jun 14 at 7:57am
That was the funniest thing I've read all day (though to be fair the day is young) Thanks for the laugh! · Jun 14 at 8:03am
I was worried that if I ate the weed I might make one of those awful cat wretching noises that would make people think I was mocking John King on CNN.
Sep '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Meanwhile, the advertising on my screen is oh-so innocent, "free lawn analysis" .
Cop to motorist (high on marijuana): Do you know how fast you were going?
Motorist: Was I speeding, officer?
Cop:You were going 12 miles per hour!
Cannibis makes people more cautious drivers not more reckless drivers. The caution could be taken to the level of impairment I would grant, but generally it' s a very different animal than alcohol.
May '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Mr. Hagedorn's "I want to target the pot market, There's no good reason we haven't." How about because, despite 10th Amendment objections, it's still illegal? Seems like a good reason to me.
Personally, I'm not going to buy Scott's products anymore. I don't think smoking anything is a healthy undertaking, and companies who openly flaunt laws don't deserve my business.
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Ottoman Umpire: Mr. Hagedorn's "I want to target the pot market, There's no good reason we haven't." How about because, despite 10th Amendment objections, it's still illegal? Seems like a good reason to me.
Personally, I'm not going to buy Scott's products anymore. I don't think smoking anything is a healthy undertaking, and companies who openly flaunt laws don't deserve my business. · Jun 14 at 8:23am
The article indicates that he's looking to tap into the legal market. Many states have various laws leaving such an opening (e.g. medical marijuana, etc.).
Aug '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Mollie Hemingway, Ed
I mean, they're super slow and overly cautious...
... which doesn't make them not a hazard. Slow vehicles can obstruct the flow of traffic, resulting in "turbulence" where accidents are more likely. There's also the worry that overly cautious drivers will overreact to those around them.
I think maybe most of us drive "impaired" sometimes, meaning, for instance, on too little sleep, or in a distracted emotional state, or a little woozy from non-recreational drugs like antihistamines. So yeah, maybe it's unfair that some forms of impaired driving are more easily punished than others.
On the other hand, I'm not sure I trust police these days to punish "impaired" driving as such. If they don't have to have proof that you were using a drug or some other distraction like a cell phone while driving, what's to stop them from using the slightest oddity in your driving as an excuse to punish you?
Mar '11
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
You appear to be making the same mistake every other advocate of legalization makes: legalize the drugs, and the crime will go away.
After prohibition was repealed, the Mafia didn't go away. Neither will the Mexican narco-gangs.
Sep '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
"Don't drink and drive; don't even putt." - Dean Martin
Dec '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
I mean, they're super slow and overly cautious, which can be infuriating, but I think it's better to enforce particular driving standards rather than how many carbs or alcohol or weed you have in your system. · Jun 14 at 7:53am
In my humble opinion, this strikes me as a pretty broad generalization. Sure, it's probably better to drive high than drive drunk, but let's be clear; you shouldn't drive in either state.
Theodore Darlymple makes the best case against drug legalization that I've read thus far. I'll just quote the opening paragraph.
"There is a progression in the minds of men: first the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and then it becomes an orthodoxy whose truth seems so obvious that no one remembers that anyone ever thought differently. This is just what is happening with the idea of legalizing drugs:... it has reached the stage when millions of thinking men are agreed that allowing people to take whatever they like is the obvious, indeed only, solution to the social problems that arise from the consumption of drugs."
May '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
Ottoman Umpire: Mr. Hagedorn's "I want to target the pot market, There's no good reason we haven't." How about because, despite 10th Amendment objections, it's still illegal? Seems like a good reason to me.
Personally, I'm not going to buy Scott's products anymore. I don't think smoking anything is a healthy undertaking, and companies who openly flaunt laws don't deserve my business. · Jun 14 at 8:23am
The article indicates that he's looking to tap into the legal market. Many states have various laws leaving such an opening (e.g. medical marijuana, etc.). · Jun 14 at 8:26am
The same article put it this way: "Marijuana use remains illegal under federal law, but federal raids on medical dispensaries have eased since President Obama took office." I realize that I'm treading on thin ice here, given my own belief in States' Rights and the limitations afforded by the Tenth Amendment, but still: a law's a law. Unless it's an immoral law -- e.g., requiring taxpayers to fund abortions, or Nazi-era prohibitions against assisting Jews -- then people and institutions should follow it.
Mar '11
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
In my opinion, nobody should be discussing medical marijuana without first reading Matt Labash's piece in the Weekly Standard.
May '10
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Great line in there: "Med Grow’s campus ... sits discreetly off 10 Mile Road, in a place where most business names camouflage what they do anyway, all packaged amidst crisp topiary in a building with tinted windows and space-age silver curvilinear trim, the way some architect thought the future would look before it became the present." (emphasis added)
That last phrase sounds familiar. Is it a paraphrase of someone else's prose?
Re: Is This The Best Lede Ever?
Ottoman Umpire
Great line in there: "Med Grow’s campus ... sits discreetly off 10 Mile Road, in a place where most business names camouflage what they do anyway, all packaged amidst crisp topiary in a building with tinted windows and space-age silver curvilinear trim, the way some architect thought the future would look before it became the present." (emphasis added)
That last phrase sounds familiar. Is it a paraphrase of someone else's prose? · Jun 14 at 11:36am
Not sure, but Labash is one of the very best writers out there. So I'd imagine it's his own.