Thank You For Smoking Pot, From A Berkeley Resident, And Psychotherapist.

[twyacht]

Just something to consider, for those in Kalifornia, and the Nation.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/thank_you_for_pot_smoking.html

 I spend a chunk of my week as a Berkeley psychotherapist trying to convince clients to lay off the illicit substances. The State of California is making my job that much harder.

There's a proposition on the November ballot to legalize marijuana for residents over 21. Now, is this really the direction that the state should be heading in?

California's economy is in tatters. We host the biggest share of the country's illegal aliens, and we have 32% of the nation's welfare caseload on our books. What else: a decaying infrastructure, substandard schools, and burgeoning crime. To add insult to injury, Jerry Brown may be taken out of mothballs for another term as governor. Is legalizing pot the best the state can do?

California used to be the promised land of milk and honey. Hollywood cast a sheen over our people, the pristine beaches, and the shimmering Pacific. New residents flocked to San Francisco to place flowers in their hair. In the '90s, Silicon Valley became the world leader of new technologies.

But now the tech scene has relocated to India, and our beaches are strewn with glass and human waste. And those old hippies? They're strung out in Berkeley's People's Park. Their rotting bodies and addled brains testify to how drugs can ravage youthful dreams.

But it's not just the street vagabonds who are one toke over the line. Most anyone out here can gain easy access to the stuff legally.There is a plethora of medical marijuana clinics sprinkling the horizon.

The entire back pages of our local free papers trumpet pot establishments. The ads beckon with promises of on-call service, weekend access, and rock-bottom prices.

Here are some actual quotes: "Free joint for all new patients with purchase." "Get your grower's license here!" "Seeds always available!" "We match any advertised price," and "24/7 service. No medical records needed!" Show up with some cold cash and a sob story and you'll undoubtedly leave with an official-looking card.

Many people will argue that there are worse drugs than pot -- alcohol, for example. And yes, there are medically valid reasons for some people to use marijuana. However, does everyone in the state need to be lighting up? And given that tons of liquor, Oxycontin, and Ritalin are also ingested, do we really need the public's brains even more scrambled?

Plus, what appears cool and experimental at age 21 looks merely sad at 60. There's something pathetic about collecting Social Security and procuring pot all at the same time. And try to have a lucid conversation with a pothead of forty-plus years.

This, to me, is the hidden agenda behind the drive to legalize pot. It is not some grand libertarian effort. Yes, it's partly our greedy government trolling for new tax dollars. But to me, the pot movement is really about the Powers that Be wanting to keep us perpetually stupid.

The politicos in Sacramento and D.C. do not want a citizenry paying close attention to them. Copious pot use produces a virtual reality as surely as World of Warcraft or Second Life. While the users are craving their next fix, the foxes are raiding the chicken coop/Treasury.

The government needs us distracted and subdued; a junkie public is a malleable one. Citizens focused on getting their next high, whether it's weed or a glimpse of Obama's pecs, can be easily led, like lambs to slaughter. Aldous Huxley anticipated exactly this strategy in his dystropian novel Brave New World, with the masses encouraged to consume an elixir he called soma, intended to keep them narcotized and tranquil.

Legalizing pot is, in my opinion, one more page lifted from the Left's playbook, a strategy to muck up our collective brains. We already have bad food,  toxic chemicals, and polluted water. People remain affixed to Facebook and to their cell phones, further mangling the mind.

The government brainwashes the masses with mind control techniques that the Soviets would have admired: Hope and Change! Transform America! Tea Partiers are racists!

With the mush propagated by the government, the media, and the schools, most people in this country don't know what to think anymore. More alarmingly, they don't know how to think anymore.

And there's a final reason why our fearless leaders want to legalize pot. A populace turning on, tuning in, and dropping out translates into more liberal voters, not conservatives ones. Isn't this why they call the stuff "dope?"

A frequent American Thinker contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a licensed psychotherapist in Berkeley. You can reach Robin through her website: www.robinofberkeley.com.

***

[fightingquaker13]

Thing is, you could say the same thing about religion, sports fanaticism, the internet or any other distraction. Pot? Its one form of escapism among many. Its all the same. Turn on, tune in, drop out? Who cares if its Jesus, ESPN or Facebook? Its all the same to the politicians as long as folks are quiecent. Here's the thing TW, I haven't smoked a joint in many years. What's stopping me from doing so isn't the law. If it were legal tomorrow, I still wouldn't buy a bag. What legalization will do is save me a whole bunch of money that could be better spent than on the nanny state drug war that tells us that Big Brother knows best. I hate to put it this bluntly, but here it is. Show me a pro drug war "conservative" and I'll show you a hypocrite. Sorry, but thats the truth.
FQ13

[twyacht]

from FQ,

Show me a pro drug war "conservative" and I'll show you a hypocrite. Sorry, but thats the truth.

So a Berkeley Shrink is a hypocrite? How many 50-60 year old Haight-Ashbury folks have you talked to? Hint,....think Ozzy Osbourne..

I think the marketing, the glut of the masses, that stand in line at the Methadone Clinic, would love free pot.

It's thinking like this that leads to Soylent Green...

The Feds, just arrested the editor of "High Times" Magazine, in Ca, because regardless of State Law, the Feds, see differently.

quote from you:
What legalization will do is save me a whole bunch of money

The money will be spent on sustaining lazy burned out zombies, with the munchies.

[fightingquaker13]

TW, I apologized for using the term hypocrite, because I respect you. Still, I feel strongly that you either believe in individual freedom and responsibilty and limited government or you don't. I find it very hard to reconcile the idea of supporting the nanny state and still calling yourself a conservative. This is why I dislike the religious right so much. No argument on my part that smoking weed is a bad idea. So is drinking tequila or eating fatty food. Its just that I think it should be my choice as to whether I do or don't. Not yours, and damn sure not the government's.
FQ13

[JC5123]

Just a question?

If smoking cigarettes is so terrible that we have to all but ban them, what makes smoking pot so much safer in the eyes of the government that we need to legalize it?

Are we now going to have a war on second hand pot smoke too?

[Sponsor]

[twyacht]

It's not the religious Right,...that is a cop out,...,it's the current Nanny state that will COVER the additional liability of legalized burnouts that will invariably end up on welfare rolls, thus creating liberal nanny enablers.

Think the subsidized housing for heroine addicts is working out in Amsterdam?  

They won't get hired, and will prefer to be a tick on any handout, including pot, and suck your and my money into the system.

Tequila, fatty foods, are a dismal choice, but a legal choice nonetheless. Moreover, those that choose to indulge in such libations, WORK to get it.

[tombogan03884]

TW, you have a piss poor argument there, I have debated this with you before and I will tell you that Fouled up people do fouled up things, I know you take a drink on occasion. Does that make you a street bum ?
You base your opinion on a couple isolated incidents with out any real genuine knowledge of what you are talking about.
Any one who supports the war on some drugs is either one of the many who directly benefit from trampling on your civil rights, I apologize to every cop on this forum, but you do have a job, and you do receive federal grant money to pay for that job.
The other group are those , like yourself, who are blissfully ignorant of the racist origins, political motivation, and fiscal goals of this unconstitutional money pit.

More of the assholes who "know what's best for you". F-em.
I'm going to bed .

[twyacht]

from TomB.

TW, you have a piss poor argument there, I have debated this with you before and I will tell you that Fouled up people do fouled up things, I know you take a drink on occasion. Does that make you a street bum ?
You base your opinion on a couple isolated incidents with out any real genuine knowledge of what you are talking about.

All I am trying to correlate, is legalization and the welfare state will go hand in hand, and grow even BIGGER. Thus having tax dollars go to support a GROWING number of zombie burnouts.

Do a lot of folks smoke dope, have a job, know a trade, sure,....Just ask those union guys at Chrysler. They are now on the Obama Plan, collecting unemployment.

Which BTW, we working folks pay for.

For someone so opposed to a "nanny" state, why would you be a proponent of a policy that will make it worse?

[tombogan03884]

You think the war on some drugs is "cost effective ?
I needed a good laugh this morning, thanks.

[jaybet]

I hate to weigh in on this...it's like everything else because our discussion is totally academic. TW is mistaken (I believe) that legalization of pot will create a bloom of pot-stoked zombies. Did the repeal of prohibition provoke a rash of alcoholics out of the previously prim and proper population? Of course not. Zombies will be zombies, no matter what their poison.

I used pot when I was young but have not now for decades and decades. It amazes me now to find out the large number of very productive people who DO use pot. They use it like a cocktail after work or to watch the game on sunday afternoon. The idea that they could go to jail for that is ludicrous, and what is even MORE crazy, is that to get that pot in most cases they are directly or indirectly funding organized crime to get it. It would be like us still buying whiskey from one of Al Capone's henchmen. F-ing ridiculous.

Zombies will be zombies but if you legalize it two things will happen: 1 There's going to be an uproar in govt. and the law enforcement supply chain because the war on drugs is REALLY BIG BUSINESS, pure and simple. Covert funding for anti-drug ops would be shrunken to some extent...there will be a big hullabaloo because there's a LOT of turf to be protected in the drug interdiction business.

Second thing that will happen is that the criminals will find a way to stay in the pot supply chain. The difference will be, though, that the govt. will collect tax on the sale of the dope and will collect INCOME TAX on the former criminals selling the dope, and the thugs in the projects will have to find another product to sell. (I'm sure they'll do just fine with their crack business)

The point is, legalizing pot will cause more trouble for government hacks than it will for police at the enforcement end or for the general public.
Personally I don't care if they legalize it. I'd rather see them spend more time setting up stings for politicians...put them away for their sleazy crap.  

The war on drugs has gone from a necessity to a bloated, wasteful embarrassment. To give you an example of what they were up to all these years, once a long time ago my daughters 2nd grade teacher took my wife aside at a parent teacher night and informed her that our daughter had informed her that Mommy does drugs.  After a lot of worry and soul-searching, the teacher called one day to say that she found out that my daughter had been talking about COFFEE...because in their little "Just Say No" indoctrination class they told them that the caffeine in coffee is a drug. That's your tax money at work.

Give the zombies some legal pot, Tyrone and Haysuse are out of business or have to go legit, and then spend then spend that money on something useful, like crucifying some of the politicians and Bernie Madoffs of the world.