Here in Milledgeville, GA, our local Walgreens has a “Back to School Special” on At Home Marijuana Tests.
The times sure are a-changin’.
Meanwhile, AOL’s MomLogic — “Real Stories. Real Advice. Real Moms” — looks at parents who say smoking pot is better than drinking:
“I want my children to grow up to believe that laws are just and rational, and if there’s injustice, they should fight it,” said Jessica Peck Corry, a Denver-based Republican political strategist. Jessica, a former GOP candidate for state senate, is also a cannabis activist who campaigned for a ballot initiative that would decriminalize marijuana possession in Colorado. “We can no longer afford to wage war on a substance that people can grow in their backyard. It’s a war we can’t win,” says Jessica. As a mother of two young children, Jessica says she plans to have an open dialogue with her kids about drug and alcohol use, even though, she says, “I want to place them in this bubble where I can protect them.” Jessica believes that by arming her daughters with accurate information, “they will respect their bodies and make good decisions.” These moms insist they’re not pushing their kids to abuse drugs, but prefer they choose the lesser of two evils. “Things have gotten so skewed. People look at pot like it’s the bogeyman. It’s not going to kill you; alcohol can kill you,” said Diane.
Those moms are on to something. Alcohol is the real killer drug; and cigarettes the real gateway drug. I favor a lower drinking age and parity of punishment for pot and booze if not the outright decriminalization, regulation and taxing of marijuana.
But NY state appears to be the worst of both worlds. I was living in NYC in 1977 when the state passed the Marijuana Reform Act, making possession of less than an ounce subject only to a $100 citation. I was surprised, then, to learn that New York City leads the world in marijuana arrests.
Harry G. Levine, professor of sociology at Queens College, City University of New York:
…despite that law, since 1997 the New York City Police Department has arrested 430,000 people for possessing small amounts of marijuana, mostly teenagers and young people in their twenties. Most people arrested were not smoking pot. Usually they just carried a bit of it in a pocket. In 2008 alone, the NYPD arrested and jailed 40,300 people for possessing a small amount of marijuana. These extraordinary numbers of arrests and jailings, continuing for over twelve years, now make New York City the marijuana arrest capital of the world.
He goes on to detail the trickery the NYCPD uses to arrest people for pot possession.
Richard Florida dug through the source data of a MapScroll breakdown of drug use by state. He says he’s knee-deep in a more extensive research project, but drops this interesting tidbit:
When it comes to the use of illegal drugs overall, there’s no real correlation [between drug use and whether a state voted for Obama or McCain in 2008]. But that changes when we look at marijuana and cocaine. Both are significantly and positively related to Obama states. The converse is true of McCain states, where the correlations are negative. Let me reiterate that these are provisional results which point to general relationships–or should I say associations–which could have many causes.
Conservative commentators might take this as evidence of the anything-goes, libertine lifestyles of “latte liberals” and of the need to return to more traditional, “all-American,” working class values. But that misses the bigger point. There are real differences in the economic and social environments of blue and red states…particularly in their levels of development, economic, and occupational structure, and, I would add, in their psycho-social environments as well.
RELATED: Dr. “leigh” on the pharmacology of marijuana. Barney Frank on his plan to legalize pot via the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2009. Mother Jones on The Patriot’s Guide to Legalization.