Friday, July 13, 2007

Pot growers are terrorists now

People who bought drugs used to be terrorist sympathizers; now pot growers are themselves terrorists. From Record-Searchlight, "Drug czar gives warning":
The nation's top anti-drug official said people need to overcome their "reefer blindness" and see that illicit marijuana gardens are a terrorist threat to the public's health and safety, as well as to the environment.

Dear John Walters,

1. Please stop calling people terrorists when they are not, by definition, terrorists. Misusing and overusing words causes them to lose meaning, which is a shame when it comes to words like "life" and "love" and "freedom" and "peace" as well as words like "terrorist" and "infidel" and "jihad" and "crusade." Don't pervert words, it's what caused or at least kindled most of history's problems.

2. Nobody plants corn in national forests. Nobody would grow marijuana in a national forest if it were legal. You can holler about drugs all you want - I mean, you're the drug czar, I understand - but don't go hollerin' about the environment when it is in fact prohibition that causes the most environmental degradation via illegal growing, nasty lab chemicals, interdiction efforts, etc.

3. Perhaps you believe that guns kill people, or perhaps you're more of the mind that people kill people. Either way, whether it's guns or people or people with guns or the devil that kills people, marijuana doesn't kill people. You cannot poison someone with weed; you cannot fashion a cannabis plant into a lethal weapon (unless maybe you strangle someone with a hemp rope?). Sorry. People operating high up in the black market tend to have guns, and are often criminals drawn by profit and undaunted by risk. It's prohibition, and it's currently your fault.

4. Be consistent, will you? Are pot smokers "a-motivated" stinky irresponsible bums or highly organized terrorists? I'm confused.

5. Re: "reefer blindness", again with the "I know you are but what am I."

6. Honestly, this whole thing is way below the belt so I'm just gonna go ahead and say "Your mom was a terrorist last night if ya know what I mean ZING/HIYO!!1" Not so much to insult you or the saintly woman who brought you into this world as to demonstrate how your own medicine tastes. Anyway, I'm 19 and writing in a student policy blog, what's your excuse?

Cordially,
Rebecca.

Now go write your own letter, except make it to the editor, and try not to make any your mom jokes (it's very tempting).

2 comments:

JT Barrie said...

I prefer to call drug dealers what they really are "drug war profiteers". They are the Haliburtons of the War on Drugs making obscene taxpayer subsidized profits with no accountability whatsoever. Of course I recently met someone who grew marijuana for medical patients who is a hairbreadth away from a life sentence. Now that is ridiculous!
Most people who grow marijuana for obscene black market profits are not humanitarians. They are vile, self-centered, and as amoral as the thugs who recruit and exploit illegal immigrants. You don't cross these people because they use violence and coercion with no moral qualms whatsoever. They have to because they are constantly dealing with other people who have no moral qualms.

However, like all good business people - and they are, above all just a subset of the corporate world - they have an eye for profit and meeting a market's needs. This market was created by the War on Drugs. They will not deliberately sell defective and dangerous drugs. They want repeat business and satisfying the market makes them money. Elimination of competition, even with legal products, knows few limits. Legendary cutthroats like Bill Gates have gone to extraordinary lengths to promote dependency on their services and eliminate competition. With no governmental oversight the drug dealers take even more extraordinary measures - including snitching out competition and gangland style violence. Survivors in the business utilize the police as their primary goons to promote their illicit empire - just like successful corporations use them to quell labor problems. It always helps those who exploit illegal immigrants to remind their workers of their real status here.

whaat? said...

very sell said rebecca. i was a drug and alcohol counselor many moons ago, when the drug war was being ramped up, and i looked around one day at the half-way house i was running and it seriously occured to me that none of the residents deserved having a war declared against them. in fact no one does. i've been opposed ever since and in fact consider it to be america's embrace of facism. that's right, i said it. periodically, along with checks to the organized anti-drug war folks i like to send along kudos and congrats, because you are the true heroes in this country and don't forget it for one instance.