Marijuana: Legalization vs. Decriminalization

Bernardo Ruiz’s movie, Kingdom of Shadows, placed me squarely in the center of the debate on drugs. I found myself sitting on stages, in front of crowds, like some wild indigenous specimen: see there are white people who do this shit.

I was uneasy.

I was uneasy throughout filming.

I did not know what Bernardo was after. I was sick of retelling tired stories. I’d been out of the business a quarter century. I read the same shit you do. And the same shit lazy, fearful reporters read and regurgitate.

I’m screaming, I am not qualified, all the while, telling them what I think I know.

And then I sit on a stage like a wooden Indian.

Afterwards: reporters.

I am about as close as they’ll get to interviewing a real smuggler. Those guys are dangerous.

I feel like a fake.

I saw this one long-haired Mexican man in the crowd after a San Antonio screening. Quanah Parker. He looked at me. I looked at him. Fake people all around and here’s this Shaman and I got to talk to reporters.

Since, I took a look around. Talked to the people.

I am now, once again, an expert. I am not in the business.

I did what reporters are supposed to. Listened to those that know, without threat or coercion.

What I know is fresh and real and I know more than the cops. They don’t believe this, but I do.

You lost the war, motherfuckers.

You have no idea how bad you lost this war.

I am going to stop asking for legalization of marijuana.

Legalization sounds like some gift you have to offer. You were wrong to establish this law in the first place and it remains wrong today.

Marijuana is a medicinal herb placed on this planet by your creator.

Its’ uses are so wide and varied, remain so un-explored, that I envision entirely new fields of medical research that will arise once explored.

Truth is, it’s the spiritual applications that scare white Europeans. (if you’re white, you’re probably European [non-Native American]).

Jamaican Rastafarians, Mexican Shaman, Colombian healers.

Supernatural feats.

Oh….

Feel that hair start to rise, feel that flesh crawl?

What was that?

Now we’re getting down to the real shit.

Life after Kingdom of Shadows

I watched last night as Kingdom of Shadows aired nationwide on PBS stations. I said something at the end of the film I now regret. It was true and it was sincere at the time, but I see things differently today.

I see a sick man in that film. Tired. Weak. Hanging on to sobriety like it’s the last sacrament on earth. I see a man beat down by the laws of our society.

Life has kicked my ass since.

At one point I suffered what I thought was a heart attack and was hospitalized only to learn that nothing was wrong with my heart; I was stressed to the point of breaking and my body shut down.

I left that hospital, after two days without a single prescription or treatment. Later, a local doctor issued me a prescription for Zanex.

I don’t take that shit.

So it went into the cabinet. I’d had dizzy spells, warning signs, preceding the event for several weeks. The signs returned.

I tried half a low-dose Zanex. First and last time. It does not work for me. I don’t like the way it makes me feel.

Shortly after New Year’s Day, 2016, while everyone else was swearing off drugs and habits, I smoked a joint. 29 years without a drink or a puff.

Since, I have tried a sip of whiskey.

They work and that’s why people use them. Both present harmful side effects, especially in an industrial environment.

I also got off my ass and went back to working hard, physically.

I feel better.

It’s not drugs I hate, it’s the goddamned business.

I am sick of the way we as a society treat drug users.

I am sick of cops and judges and lawyers and probation officers and prisons. I am sick of slimy fucks preying on immigrants, addicts. I am sick of cartels. 

I am sick of apathetic people that allow this evil to persist among us.

The war on drugs is a war on ourselves.

End it.

Now.

Hunger games for ranchers, farmers and cowboys: Thoroughbred horse racing

Sabbath day.

I send my horses to the racetrack like a mother offers her child to war.

I know the costs.

I know the risks.

I love horses.

I also know certain is the control if you play by their rules.

Fuck assembly line industrial agriculture. I will not be your slave.

Let the games begin.

Gaff

Despite not having a stakes winner (yet), derived from today's Bloodhorse sire list for Thoroughbred horses standing in Texas:

From the top ten, Gaff ranks 8th by gross winnings.

He ranks 1st by earnings per starter.
He ranks 1st by winners per starter.
He ranks 1st by repeat winners per starter.

The year ain't over.

A book of proverbs

Starting today, good Lord willing, I begin a new book.

It's not exactly new. Version one began to take form a few months back. I began the book ala Chuck Bowden, my writing mentor, in a small note pad, hand written, as thoughts occur.

Alas: version one of the book suffered an ill fate and got left in the wash. The remains were unintelligible.

Ya'll ain't yet saved.

Anything you say or do in my presence is not only your experience but mine as well.

You are warned.

The title:

A Book of Proverbs.

Time to take out the trash

Time to take out the trash.

Libertarian purists don't have answers for running an orderly society.

But theirs is the medicine prescribed for our current ailment.

The old must be removed to make room for the new.

Establishment parties will not remove themselves willingly.

Mr Obama....

Declare a moratorium, effective immediately.

Given the current state of affairs, where entire states have in effect, legalized the use of cannabis

all the while federal law continues to classify this herb as a schedule-1 drug

large numbers of inmates remain locked up for marijuana offenses.

No more arrests until this law is changed.

Revisit the cases of all locked up for marijuana offenses.

All of them.

Now, please.

Don't fret: we'll be all right

My generation: a parable

A parable:

My generation.

The box arrives. 101 yellow chicks, hungry, aside from one which lays dead. Hard to tell it was once a chick.

They are placed in a Hilton Hotel of sorts, where chickens are concerned.

Food, the best Purina makes, light, heat, temperature all controlled.

They eat.

They shit.

They grow.

At about five weeks the provider culls 50 of these almost five pound birds.

They go to the low rent neighborhood.

Near my house.

He gives them away. No way in hell he'd accept the full value of a prepared meal made from one of these animals in exchange for killing, plucking, gutting the bird.

He has never known hunger.

His birds, now my birds, live in a makeshift coop made from pallets, baling wire and scraps of mesh wire.

I have known hunger.

Meanwhile, the few remaining birds from the Hilton sit in a cage, 8 pounds already. Winners at the livestock show. Never mind they cannot walk.

Back in low rent village, someone shows up and picks up all the birds that cannot walk.

They are taken, killed and gutted, one by one.

Over the next few weeks, more become immobile, unable to support their weight.

I open the door to the cage and leave a space large enough for them to come and go.

Many die.

Their carcasses mostly fed dogs or pigs.

Some were so nasty that not even the dogs were interested.

Today there are fifteen healthy birds from the original one hundred, healthy, active, coming and going.

Fifteen more sit, immobile, depressed.

Waiting.

This is my generation.

This river runs red

Augustus McRae

Always wanted to be Augustus McCrae.

Had to settle for Captain Call.

Politics

This person pretty much sums up my take on politics.

Dylan

Lungs

Ruminations from the garden: segundo

I have begun another book.

Ruminations from the garden, segundo.

I may well just put copies on the counter at the Belmont General Store, previously referred to as the Red Rock store, adjacent to Leah Dawson Ford's Red Hen Pottery Studio and Gallery, for any one that arrives in a living body and wants to claim one. Tear off the proper number of pages you can level a table up to a little better than 3/4 inch off kelter. Work for starting fires or after the morning constitutional should Putin prove his claim, (some shit about being able to destroy us in 30 minutes... Which triggers stories Edward Zehandalaar told me about nuclear weapons--the dude is a nuclear physicist in on trumped up charges because "they" question his loyalty, Jewish daddy. Persian mom. Persian rather than Iranian. Poor sob born on the island of Java during WWII only EZ is a kid. They all get carted off to the interment camp by the Japanese. EZ, this little kid is hungry. No food. He's watching his mom shrink into a skeleton with a gap in the crotch big enough to throw a volleyball through. And there's no food and he's hungry as hell, and the Japanese guard, well he picks out a pregnant woman and they put up the money. What's the sex of the baby? And then a guards slashes her belly and the unborn infant spills to the ground as the woman grasps. Anyhow, they don't trust EZ so they trump up charges and keep him in a safe place. The man can build a nuclear weapon. And, he knows the threat. He worked on a system to protect our own nuclear arsenal from EMP attack. You know, when you blow up a thermonuclear devise some 200 kilometers into the atmosphere, and an electronic pulse fries the unprotected American electric grid because no one would listen to that crazy green/conservative Roscoe Bartlett when he told us faraday cages are cheap to build and we needed them. Anyhow, this crazy motherfucker Putin knows this, as do his handlers in Europe where the biggest of the big still maintain control. And we are over there jabbing this dude with a sharp stick.

This is not a joke. Not a practice run. Knowledge will be worth more than money. World debt requires a sacrifice, a reset. Cancellation of debt which means loss of money for all calling themselves American, a terrible deflationary depression. You and I are like a fattened calf. The dollar must be destroyed to make way for a new reserve currency. It's not really personal for them, we're the bastard children anyhow.....

Illegal smile

Inventory

Did an inventory.

I am at heart, an anarchist.

Waiting on a king that serves, rather than leads.

In the meantime.....

Concerning marijuana

If you follow my Facebook page, you will notice a number of links to articles discussing marijuana legalization. And if you haven’t yet figured it out, I am a proponent of legalization.

That is not to say implementing such laws will not create legal complications in the real world.

It’s easy to say you’re an anarchist, or a libertarian, until something someone else does affects you also. And just about anything anyone else does affects you to some degree or another. We live in a crowded world.

Many say marijuana should be treated as is alcohol or tobacco, and I more or less agree. However, there are differences between these substances, rather profound differences.

Alcohol in very low doses, let’s say a single beer or glass of wine is a mild drug. It hits rather quickly and clears from the system in fairly short order. It’s easy to regulate how high you get, how incapacitated, also. One does this, two, this, and three that. More than three and you are quite fucked up and incapacitated, a danger to be around.

It can be, in low dose, a beneficial, stress relieving and enjoyable drug (and yes, it is a drug).

In high doses, it’s a proven killer, a raging, mocking, indiscriminate killer.

Some will say the marijuana of today ain’t the stuff you smoked as a youngster. Well, maybe not you.

In my case, however, I knew people on the cutting edge and they were producing a similar herb many years ago. I smoked my share of the same damn stuff you think is new to the world, sativa, indica and even ruderalis. The difference now is that quality herb is now widespread among domestic producers; what was once the stuff of legend and a few connoisseurs can now be had in multiple choices and flavors at legal dispensaries or from illegal sources throughout the land.

The potency of this modern high end weed is such that a user needn’t smoke a joint to get high. One puff, you’re all in. And you are going to be there for a while. Furthermore, especially if you’re not accustomed to using the stuff, some effects will linger, to a mild degree, for up to a couple of days thereafter.

Don’t throw rocks.

I know what I am talking about.

However, the drug and its effect is much different than alcohol and therefore can’t be treated exactly the same.

A person driving, high on pot and unaccustomed to being so, probably won’t swerve on the road or drive to excess speed like someone inebriated on alcohol might. But he or she might well drive well below the speed limit, or feel the need to park that car and hide in a safe secure place. A seasoned smoker will likely drive pretty much like anyone else, even when high, not unlike someone that has taken their prescription anti-depressant.

Marijuana is a powerful medicinal herb, with many profound uses. Tell me otherwise and I will tell you that you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I speak from personal experience, my own and that of others I know on an intimate basis that have used and continue to use the drug for these purposes.

No other drug on the planet rivals its effect on controlling nausea. Not even close.

It is also an appetite stimulant.

Those two properties combined make it very useful for someone suffering side effects of chemotherapy and or radiation treatments.

Pot is a stress reliever and can be useful for those suffering from PSTD or other stress related ailments.

There are reports that the cannibidiol resin, found mostly in marijuana leaves, suppresses cancer cell growth and also is a powerful medicine for those suffering epileptic seizures, once again, unrivaled by any pharmaceutical on the market. For what it’s worth, ingestion of this will not get you high, it’s the THC in marijuana that provides the psychotropic effect, and there are strains of marijuana that contain little or almost no THC.

The herb has another effect that scares the hell out of those in charge. Somehow or other, it alters perception of a user and can radically change a person’s way of seeing this world.

Imagine a war when people throw down their guns and say fuck this shit. I ain’t fighting no more. 

Only you don’t have to imagine it. It happened, in hundreds, thousands of cases, during the Viet Nam war. And guess what; enough people stood up and said enough is enough to stop that war, cold in its tracks.

You may think otherwise, but this is what happened.

And this scared the hell out of the cocksucking warmongers sending someone else’s kids off to expend massive amounts of ordnance and kill people, or conversely, to die in their goddamned war.

Now, the part the pot smokers ain’t going to like.

It’s customary, while watching commercials on some prescription drug to hear a long laundry list of potential side effects, while some good looking actor walks through life in an apparent state of bliss.

Among the side effects a commercial on marijuana might list would be the following: Some people report short term memory loss (where did I put the fucking keys? Did I miss that appointment? Etc.). Coughing, perhaps to the point of rolling on the floor as you try to hold in that hit. Chest congestion with extensive use. Maybe shortness of breath, also with extensive use. The stuff has tar in it. This is not good for your lungs.

This altered perception, (or distorted reality for those in the opposing camp), tends to make a user not give much of a fuck about making a shit pot of money or climbing the ranks in society. People often become “dropouts” for lack of a better word. Detractors would say this is a bad thing, pot heads would say this is an anti-brainwashing, anti-indoctrination effect that makes people more laid back and yes, even more caring about the things that really matter.

Which may include eating a whole damn sack of chips or a carton of ice cream while listening, really listening, to some music while staring at your navel.

But it ain’t like it’s the end of the world when your neighbor sets about doing any of the above.

The bottom line is this: I think you are a hypocrite if you drink alcohol, smoke tobacco or take pharmaceutical drugs for you ailments, both physical and mental, and feel the need to put others in jail for using marijuana.

Legalize the stuff.

Now, please.