On November 4th Massachusetts voters will have the chance to pass a ballot initiative decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana -- removing the threat of jail time for possessing an ounce or less of marijuana for personal use.
In response to the announcement that the initiative will be on the ballot a columnist for Boston's tabloid newspaper wrote the column below which was printed today.
Letters to the editor of the Boston Herald need to be short and well written - under 200 words. The average printed letter is about 120 words in length.
Please also support the initiative. For details visit http://sensiblemarijuanapolicy.org/
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Pubdate: Sun, 6 Jul 2008
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2008 The Boston Herald, Inc
Author: Howie Carr
SENSIBLE POT A HALF-BAKED POLICY, DUDE
Marijuana makes you stupid. It's as simple as that.
And now in Massachusetts, we are going to have a ballot question that asks the following: Do you really want to make it even easier than it already is to get stupid, and stay stupid?
Yes, the Bong Brigade is on the march again. They want to put the high back into high school, the truckin' back in truck stops, the joint back in all those joint legislative committees. Stand by to see stoners at the Stone Zoo, potheads in Marblehead. The grass is always greener in Greenfield, dude.
If you liked HempFest on the Boston Common every September, you're going to love legalized marijuana.
This one's, like, totally for Jerry Garcia!
This year, the front group is something called the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy, and it's pushing a Sensible State Marijuana Policy. Its flacks are available for media interviews to discuss their "sensible policy."
Organizers include the usual "concerned citizens," with a few token "former law enforcement professionals" thrown in. Their goal is to use the initiative to abolish criminal penalties for less than an ounce of marijuana or, to use their preferred word, hemp, as in, "Dude, did you know, like, George Washington's army used hemp when it was fighting in, uh, like, was it the Civil War, man?"
The sensible group's press release sounds like it was written after watching a "Dragnet 1967" marathon on TVLand. Harmless people, we are told, "are arrested, booked, entered into the Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) system, resulting in a possible sentence of up to six months in jail and a $500 fine."
Key word: possible.
Do you know how difficult it is to actually be thrown in jail around here? You can lie under oath and obstruct justice, and you don't have to do a day in the can - am I right Tom Finneran?
Pot charges are usually meaningless add-ons, like piling a driving-to-endanger on top on an OUI, or like Neil Entwistle being charged with possession of an unregistered handgun. The potheads say 7,500 marijuana citations make it onto the CORI system every year. But how many of those Class B controlled-substance convictions are added to someone's CORI record along with more serious raps like, say, for possession of Class D controlled substances (cocaine) with intent to distribute?
The ganja-guys then cite the alleged "collateral damage" of this CORI indignity: "inability to find employment, obtain housing and receive a college loan."
Please. The reason stoners can't find employment is because they're too wasted. They forgot to turn on the alarm clock. They went out for a smoke break and never returned. They missed the bus, man. They can't "obtain housing" because they can't get it together to ever leave mom's rent-free basement.
Unless you're in the cop's face when you light up - like they do at HempFest - you face almost zero chance of getting arrested.
Decriminalizing pot doesn't seem like a big deal, I'll grant you. After the courts decreed Adam and Eve are going to be Adam and Steve, bringing Cheech & Chong along for the ride amounts to little more than a footnote.
But the problem with this ballot question is, it will lead to more pot smoking, which this society needs like . . . like, fill in the blank, dude. How can the same health pests who loathe tobacco not care a whit about a different debilitating drug that you have to ingest into your lungs in the form of smoke?
The fact is, once you make something legal, even if it's just de facto, it's easier to get. Pot does fry your brain. On my radio show, I can tell a stoner within 10 seconds.
They . . . talk . . . slow. They mention "hemp." They talk about "thousands" of political prisoners locked up for pot. And since their vocabulary is so stunted, because their memories are shot, they keep repeating the same words over and over again.
Sensible . . . sensible . . . sensible.
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