Stoners of the world, rejoice!
Actually, that should be: Stoners of the world, you suck! However, while you really, really do suck, there may also be something over which to rejoice:
I love messing with stoners, although it often tiptoes right up next to picking on the handicapped. The last time I mentioned stoners, I got all kinds of e-mails from people who suggested that they would never trust a baby boomer who had never tried marijuana. I responded by telling them that they don’t trust anybody, because that crap makes them paranoid.
However, I am a baby boomer, and I’ve never tried it. In fact, I grew up in Southern California, in the ghetto, in the late 1960s, and I’ve never even been remotely tempted. I don’t need help relaxing. And I hear and enjoy music just fine.
That claim about marijuana always killed me: You can hear music better. Better than what?
It’s like this idiot I know who once told me this really disgusting story about beads. He said that he used them to enhance the sensation of sexual climax. Since when does that need to be enhanced? Outside of playing rugby, it’s already the greatest physical sensation in the world. Enhancing it somehow would make it, what, the greatest-est? What the hell’s wrong with people?
Drugs are not for me, but I’m not going to say that drugs and alcohol are stupid. Well, actually, I will: Drugs and alcohol are stupid. But, last I checked, it’s generally not against the law to be stupid. If stupidity were a crime, half the state Legislature would be wearing orange jumpsuits.
Besides the claims that I heard growing up about marijuana enhancing things, there were also the claims that it was safer than alcohol (it almost certainly is), and that it wasn’t a gateway drug. How about a moment of honesty here: Think of all the people you know who have smoked marijuana or are currently doing so. Can you think of even one who has only smoked marijuana and not tried any other drugs? I didn’t think so.
Actor/comedian Denis Leary, on his No Cure for Cancer CD, talked about why he soured on the experience. He said that all of his stoner friends were always talking about making bigger and better bongs. Leary said, “Marijuana doesn’t lead to other drugs; it leads to freakin’ carpentry! That’s why I stopped; not because I didn’t like it, but because I didn’t want to build anything.”
I remember standing on the UA football field during practice way back in 1977, about a month after the big Fleetwood Mac concert in Arizona Stadium, and underfoot were little marijuana plants mixed in with the usually perfectly manicured field. I thought to myself then that they would never legalize marijuana for sale under strict governmental guidelines—like alcohol—because it would be too easy to just grow one’s own, whereas people aren’t going to grow vodka in the backyard. Not on purpose, anyway. But they could damn sure grow their own marijuana. And 14-year-olds could grow it just as easily as 24-year-olds, rendering useless the argument that government control of it would stop underage pot-smoking (just like government control has stopped underage drinking).
Anyway, according to a big article in USA Today, attitudes and laws concerning marijuana are changing.Prosecutors and judges who have thrown countless people in jail and/or prison for marijuana-related crimes now favor a treatment approach. Legislators see dollar signs, and pot- smokers who have been fighting for decades to at least decriminalize—if not completely legalize—the stuff see a ray of hope. (They also see really pretty colors, even when the Grateful Dead are performing. The colors actually get prettier when the Dead stop playing.)
It’s already been completely decriminalized in Maine and Alaska. In the latter case, the bill that did so was called Maybe This Will Make Being an Alaskan Less of a Living Hell Act. (Nonetheless, the clown who has won the Iditarod dog-sled race in each of the past few years complained that he wasn’t able to smoke marijuana during this year’s event, because organizers enacted drug-testing. Yeah, there’s a sport.)
If marijuana is legalized in the United States, I don’t think there will be a spike in its usage. There will always be that subgroup of people consisting of hedonists, addicts, experimenters, bad musicians and the I-Can’t-Cope-So-I-Smoke-Dope crowd, no matter what. The baby boomers who started smoking marijuana and never really quit will probably feel vindicated that their decades-long cacophony of, “Oh wow, man,” finally wore society down.
But I think that the baby boomers could have a dampening effect as well. When that 14-year-old kid arrives at his own personal crossroads as to whether to try drugs or not, it might go like this:
Kid 1: Hey, man, you wanna try some of this? It’ll help you forget about the math quiz.
Kid 2: Naw, dude. How lame is that? My grandfather smokes that stuff!
This article appears in Mar 25-31, 2010.
the war on drugs is far more illegal than the drugs
Once again you show yourself to be a total idiot that focuses on exaggerated stereotypes instead of reality.
A reminder, folks, that name-calling on TucsonWeekly.com is not acceptable, even when discussing Danehy.
Tom supports those who support vested interests of power and/or money the most potent factors standing in the way of freedom for the individual. These vested interests whether operating through private capital or official agencies suppress a product or thought that threatens its area of monopoly. The police have a vested interest in illegal Cannabis as narcotics agencies have a vested interest in all illegal substances.
As long as the law is in place in Arizona they can keep people under the continual threat of police search or action, and at the same time divert rebellion into dead-end channels of criminality and addiction.
“Drugs and alcohol are stupid.” Danehy
and i am SURE you get a lot of party invitations… ahahahahaha!
Um Jimmy, but if Danehy can insult folks he should be ok with receiving it without you coming to his rescue…
It’s not about rescuing Danehy (who calls no specific people names in this column); it’s about keeping the comments on this site from deteriorating into a clusterfuck free-for-all (see azstarnet). Them’s the rules.
Historic statewide initiative in California to legalize, control, and tax cannabis. Help build national support for the movement. Sign up on the website, join the campaign!
taxcannabis.org
You are one boring out of touch baby boomer. Marijuana also went along with a subculture that changed the world … it was part of the statement … it was part of the experience. Woodstock without marijuana, ya, right. The subculture made the world a global place, a more peaceful, intellectual place unlike the tiny little world that you live in. Why on earth does Tucson Weekly allow you to take up space is my question? Get out and travel, see what the world is about and shut up until you do. Your trite shallow comments which include your limited exposure and knowledge are boring as hell.
Some people need all the edge they can get. Baby boomer? You write like some stoner in his 20’s. Trust me, you might as well light up.
This comment may be the most significant piece Tom has ever presented to the public. He is absolutely right on every point. The people who misinterpret his point, which I think is simply to let the idiots who like this stuff have it, and go on to whatever level of abstraction they think they are going on to, but let’s make them pay a healthy tax for it. Unlike Tom, I tried it, found it ineffective, preferred a martini, and thought the people who were so enamored of it were making up their hallucinations. Legalize it! No problem, it’s so stupid, the only thing I really thought as I inhaled the crap was, ‘is this better than Camels’ (that I had painfully quit), and concluded anything further was, as Tom points out, just stupid. Enjoy, you heads of all kinds!!!
Marijuana is just as much a gateway drug as cigarettes or booze, so why does it even have to be brought up. People intending to get high will do what they feel ’till they hit that ceiling.
As far as you talking about how you never tried drugs, here’s a cookie for you, BFD.
The marijuana laws are archaic and create the criminal element and the potential as a crop for rope, clothing, and oils. If California legalizes it they will be the only competition for hemp products against Canada.
Your humour is dry and out of place on this one Danehy.
Let’s see: We’ve got Dennis Leary, whom Mr Danehy has apparently heard of, vs Bill Hicks, whose comedy act Leary ripped off.
It’s a little bit like slagging the Grateful Dead but admiring the music of The Eagles…
I always used to enjoy your columns. Not that I always agreed with you, but I celebrated your right to your opinions. NOW, you have shown your “true colors”, your ignorance, your lack of experience, your lack of what really is. I no longer think of you as someone who just MAY understand what is really going on in this crazy world. You seem to need a shot of “self-esteem.”, given the fact that you have never tried THC. You need to further your Fragile ego to satisfy “someone” (sorry, don’t know who or why) to make yourself a bonafide, acceptable journalist. Dude, you are just a “nothing” who has fooled society for awhile. I feel sorry for you. How can you ever write anything that anyone will believe now. You know very little, you are over-weight, you are NOTHING. No one wants to hear you any more. You are a POSER, and now WE all know it. You never went through the fire, YOU KNOW NOTHING WORTH HEARING ABOUT!
You obscenely make light of the tragedy prohibition has brought to millions of INDIVIDUAL persons who have served time – hard time – for a political crime.
The so-called war on drugs is merely a tool of coercion. Haven’t figured that out yet, have ya tom? You suck. Yeah. And you’re really stupid.
I have never done illegal drugs and rarely any legal ones, however, the War On Drugs is Stupid. Its like prohibition. We need to regulate, tax and make this stuff legal, including the Hard Stuff with a Doc’s RX. Lets eliminate the Cartels, get the tax money and stop the nonsense. I don’t care if the drug users noses fall off and their teeth fall out. I want to stop the violence. I want the jails and prisons for the real criminals like the child abusers, murderers, rapist and the like.
Daheny must be smoking the good stuff and refusing to admit it since im sure he eitehr smokes cigarettes, drinks coffee or drinks alcohol. If he is serious then he would be totally affected if the prohibition on alcohol would come back im sure.
Tom’s snarky discussion of a topic about which he admits he has no personal knowledge accentuates his willful ignorance. The creation of victimless crimes as embodied in the War on Drugs — a neat way to command scarce resources to starve reform and serve repression — is a central issue in American society. An opportunity wasted.
SWEET my comment made print. I must have really hit a nerve considering I didn’t even call him any names at all unlike most of the other posters. I didn’t even bash his viewpoint only pointed out that his stance is probably ruining his social life, even if he is perfectly ok with that.
What a bunch of stereotypical, hypocritical, uninformed, and narrow minded tripe.