Friday, July 8, 2011
Chicagoland / News Pot busts of the week
Posted by Lauri Apple on 07.08.11 at 02:13 PM
- Image indy_slug via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
- — In Pitt County, N.C., police busted a son-and-pop marijuana growing operation after a concerned citizen who was only trying to make the world a safer, more orderly place called the cops. The busted family business was kinda large—the estimated value of the confiscated pot was $127,000, which is almost as much as we owe in student loans. An undercover officer involved in the bust provided this revelatory bit of info: "Marijuana is known as the gateway drug ... If you take ten people who use cocaine, I dare say that nine out of ten's going to say they started out smoking marijuana before they started cocaine." Then he recommended everybody watch this "brand-new" movie called Reefer Madness.
- — Reefer Madness happens to be the most popular Saturday morning cartoon in Bloomfield, Ind. resident Tressie P. Palmer's household. When police were called to Palmer's home in April, her daughter told them about how her mom allegedly smokes up all the time. Palmer ended up receiving a felony drug possession charge.
- — In Woodland Park, N.J., cops stopped a guy for not wearing his seat belt, which led to them discovering that he was driving on an expired license, which led to them smelling pot in his car, which led to them busting him for possession and distribution. Why do so many pot doers fail to wear their seat belts? It's almost like you guys don't care about your personal safety or something.
- — In Granite Quarry, N.C., a guy named Charles Wayne Dobson was pulled over by a cop who knew Dobson's license was invalid and busted for having "a marijuana joint in a cigarette pack" plus "a small black box with additional marijuana inside." For whatever reason, the local Aggressive Criminal Enforcement helped with the bust. Did the marijuana attack someone? Was it infused with rabies?
- — From the international news wires: In Bali, a Japanese woman who allegedly tried to sell five grams of marijuana faces the death penalty and a $1 million fine, which is insane. Then again, so is imprisoning someone for life for possession, which happens in America.
Comments (1)
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"An undercover officer involved in the bust provided this revelatory bit of info: 'Marijuana is known as the gateway drug ... If you take ten people who use cocaine, I dare say that nine out of ten's going to say they started out smoking marijuana before they started cocaine.'"
And probably ten of ten have drank orange juice as well as eaten cheeseburgers and pizza. That obviously doesn't mean those foods and drinks cause people to eventually become cocaine users. And I highly doubt that marijuana does either. I've never bought the "gateway drug" theory. There might be a correlation between marijuana and cocaine users but that doesn't prove anything. Of course people who are more likely to use drugs will be more likely to use other drugs. But if anything, I think what actually happens is actually the reverse of the "gateway drug" theory. People who smoke weed will be less likely to eventually use cocaine and other hard drugs then they would otherwise. Many people (perhaps most) need a fix of something to get through the day at least every once in awhile. For some people, caffeine and/or alcohol is sufficient. Others need something harder like marijuana. And for some of these individuals, if marijuana isn't available they would instead use a more dangerous drug like cocaine. That just seems to be common sense. It doesn't mean that people don't go from smoking marijuana to using cocaine but I would assume the overwhelming majority of these people would have used cocaine anyway. Fighting marijuana use is probably counterproductive.
(And now Lauri breaths a sigh of relief and astonishment because she realizes I made a comment on one of her posts that didn't even criticize her.)
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