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420
If I know anything about Ricochet members, it’s that you love your weed. Half of you are probably baked right now. I can’t attend a member meetup without tripping over at least a dozen bongs and hookahs. (I don’t know how Peter Robinson gets the smell out of his fair-trade hemp poncho.)
So, happy 4/20, man. For that tiny minority of non-weedheads on Ricochet, today’s the unofficial holiday for marijuana and those who love it. The date is a reference to 4:20, which was the time of day a group of smokers called The Waldos would blaze up in 1971:
The Waldos designated the Louis Pasteur statue on the grounds of San Rafael High School as their meeting place, and 4:20 p.m. as their meeting time. The Waldos referred to this plan with the phrase “4:20 Louis.” Multiple failed attempts to find the crop eventually shortened their phrase to simply “4:20”, which ultimately evolved into a codeword that the teens used to mean marijuana-smoking in general. Mike Edison says that Steven Hager of High Times was responsible for taking the story about the Waldos to “mind-boggling, cult like extremes” and “suppressing” all other stories about the origin of the term.
Hager wrote “Stoner Smart or Stoner Stupid?” in which he called for 4:20 p.m. to be the socially accepted hour of the day to consume cannabis. He attributes the early spread of the phrase to Grateful Dead followers, who were also linked to the city of San Rafael.
Lots of Grateful Dead fans like drugs? I learn something new every day.
Marijuana is now having a larger impact on American culture due to the legalization efforts in Colorado, Washington state, and the District of Columbia. Prominent politicians in both parties are calling for the easing of restrictions and, at the very least, a decriminalization of cannabis.
Wired magazine put together an interesting video on the state of marijuana in the U.S:
I’ve never been a fan of weed and traditionally cared little about its legalization. I don’t smoke and none of my friends did either (that I knew of), so why bother changing the law? Booze is already legal; do we really need another substance to lower productivity in this lousy economy?
Admittedly, much of my opposition to weed was a cultural thing. I hate Phish concerts, dreadlocks on white guys, and Seth Rogen movies. And don’t get me started on the stomach-churning smell. Sorry hippies, but if you want to escape reality for a few hours, down a tumbler of scotch since that’s my drug of choice.
As I’ve gotten more libertarian over the years, I realized I was a big, fat hypocrite on the issue. I don’t use tobacco, eat kale or listen to Maroon 5, but I don’t want any of them outlawed except Maroon 5. Who am I to use the power of the state against people who like to smoke weed?
What does Ricochet think about the stuff? Should it be legalized, decriminalized or kept completely illegal? Has your viewpoint changed over the past few years?
Published in General
Do you have any support for your claim that welfare recipients test positive at lower rates than the general population? Are these tests given on a consistent basis (eg, random vs “scheduled with notice”)?
My sense is, all welfare drug testing has historically been done a “scheduled with notice” basis (but I don’t have definitive knowledge on the topic), which only tells us that welfare recipients are intelligent enough to lay off drugs for the period leading up to their test whereas most employer tests are done randomly because testing on a “scheduled with notice” basis is essentially pointless (for the reasons given in the previous sentence).
As for being a waste of resources, I consider paying people to not work to be a waste of resources, so I’m not particularly concerned about drug testing being a small incremental waste of resources.
Or the Peter Hollens one
I’m simply trying to keep you to one standard. People smoke pot in small amounts too. In fact, contrary to the stereotypes perpetrated by various people, most people smoke responsibly, just like drinkers do. I have smoked with MD’s Psychiatrists, Phamacuetical executives, lawyers, psychotherapists, and of course, musicians, and in almost every case people stop consuming when they feel adequately high -usually one or two puffs. People don’t drink to get drunk, but people don’t smoke weed to get ‘zonked’ either which is the equivalent. One, two or three drinks a person feels adequately high and if responsible, stops. In other words people who say, like you, that they don’t drink to ‘get high’ either are lying or they aren’t using the word ‘high’ properly. The effects of alcohol, even one drink, is a sort of high, or else people would be drinking martini-flavored milkshakes with 0% alcohol.
The other things you keep saying I’m not arguing with.
I would anticipate deleterious lung effects from smoking, whether tobacco or pot. I’d be more curious to know how the tobacco smokers compare with the pot smokers.
As to the “6-fold” question, I’m not sure we’ve shown schizophrenics use pot more often, or more pot smokers become schizophrenic. The examples of schizophrenia I’ve known are all heavy tobacco users, but I don’t think anyone’s suggesting tobacco causes schizophrenia. It just seems to help with the symptoms.
Openly conceded that tobacco use has declined, but reliance upon tobacco-generated taxes has risen (inversely proportionally, perhaps?) If the punitive nature of taxes is really the motivation, shouldn’t the rate of taxation remain proportional, and that the total amount of tax revenue eventually wither away as smoking does? Not happening. So too, with taxation on alcohol: here in Washington state, once the government was compelled to get out of the liquor business, additional taxes were added to the now-private sale of booze to insure that the government continued to get its cut.