Just Say, No, No, No to Mary Jane
By Gail-Tzipporah Saunders
Legalizing mary jane is like the anti-drug commercial that ran during the height of the drug movement before disco and big hair came onto the scene. An announcer's voice says, "This is your brain" accompanied by a close up of a cracked egg. Next, the same egg heats up, fries and sizzles while the announcer says, "This is your brain on drugs."
Now why would anyone want to legalize something that fries the brain? Besides, many people's brains are already fried. They don't need anything to help them along. Earl and many others think that a dope tax could help our economy, but since our tax dollars have already been mismanaged and siphoned, who's to say that those won't also go up in smoke?
The one argument that the dear, illustrious Earl also makes is that no one will shoot anyone over something that is legal, but who's to say that that won't come to pass as well? Ever since the first club, stick of dynamite, gun was invented people have come up with some pretty inventive reasons for offing each other.
Also mj stays in the system longer than booze. With hooch, in the best case scenario at least, a person gets drunk, falls down, wakes up feeling (and possibly wishing) that he has died and either drinks a concoction made with tomato juice, tabasco sauce and a raw egg (yes, that egg appears again) or fumbles through the day. And unlike booze, it can lead to other things. But do I think that people should be jailed over it? I am not that much of a Republican. But they should do a form of community service like working with those who are disabled and never had or will have the chances or opportunities they did or being sent to clean up that oil spill that is sure to make its way around the world.
But my biggest argument against legalizing the stuff is that I don't want to be talk to anyone who is under the influence because it's hard enough to carry on a sane, intelligent conversation around here. And few things are more frustrating than having an intense conversation who is fuzzy and whose brain has gone AWOL. Aside from legalizing it for medical purposes, who would want to seek the help of a professional who had just toked up unless both are in the same state?
In the case of a lawyer, it could mean that you could wind up in jail for failing to pay a dog licensing fine. In a dentist's office, it could mean you go in for a cleaning and polishing and wind up being heavily sedated with a hole drilled all the way into your brain stem.
And those are things up with which we should not put.
mary jane, mary jane, Please make me legal
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
mary jane mary jane mary jane (sometimes called marijuana), and the never ending debate over whether to legalize mary jane. But really when you think about it what's there really to debate. Every study, report, investigation, and stat that I've ever seen shows this.
Almost no on dies from it. No one's health is impaired by it. No one goes bonkers and blows up buildings and shoots up streets after toking on it. No one plays motor cross on the highways after toking on it. The same can't be said about the two deadliest killer drugs on the planet. That's booze and smokes. And no one that I know of has ever said that they shouldn't be legal. And while we're at it, the two killer drugs bring in millions every year for desperate, cash strapped cities and counties.
That money pays for a lot of libraries, schools, cops, firefighters, street lights, and repairs. Then there's the off the chart, bankrupting costs of warehousing thousands of prisoners in jails and prisons for essentially indulging in a harmless pastime. Legalize mary jane and be done with it.
