Give The Potheads What They Want
By David Keele
I’ve
got some breaking news for you. You
won’t hear a ‘whoosh’ because it won’t be reported on Fox News Channel
or on any cable news channel. The
media establishment won’t report it. This
news that’s just come in is, though, that the war’s over—the Drug War that
is.
The
good news is that there’s a decisive winner.
The great news is that decisive winner isn’t the United States
Government and its wide-ranging assortment of anti-drug, thus anti-freedom,
programs. The drugs have won this
war, not the illegal drugs but the legal drugs, the over-the-counter drugs, the
prescription drugs. From the Nyquil
nursery to the Prozac playground, from the Hydrocodone home to the Oxycotin
office and all points where pills are popped in between, we’re a sick nation
running off of even sicker medication.
Nobody’s
complaining though. The money’s
rolling in the big pharmaceutical companies, you know, America’s
non-prosecuted drug dealers, and the mood’s rolling out of America’s time
out of mind. If anybody tries to
complain, chances are no one’s listening and the complainers will soon forget
whatever they complained about in the first place, right after their next
absorption, injection, sip, snort or swallow.
Thank
God we’re not a nation of potheads. It
gives me the munchies just thinking about it.
Now, I’ve never smoked pot but I’ve been in the company of many
people when they were ‘high.’ I
used to be one of those ‘drugs are bad,’ ‘just say no’ people, didn’t
even believe in medical marijuana. It’s
popular to call people ‘flip-floppers’ nowadays if the facts change, thus
changing someone’s position on any given cause or issue.
Call me a ‘flip-flopper’ if you like; I don’t see the big deal
about recreational marijuana use in the privacy of one’s home, certainly not
the big deal about pot being smoked for medicinal purposes.
I
know people whose lives are dysfunctional not from the so-called “gateway
drug” pot but from the “all access” 24/7 pharmacies.
You know people like that too or else you’ve heard about them on
television or read about them in magazines or newspapers.
Most everyone knows a “Courtney Love” or a “Rush Limbaugh” for
that matter. What’s wrong with
our healthcare system? Heck,
what’s right with it? All of
these drugs, drugs, drugs readily available on the legal market, and doctor
please write me a prescription. My
back hurts; my head hurts; my stomach hurts.
Doctor, I hurt; make me feel good.
I
know women who sleep all day. Excuse
me, I know women who lie in bed all day, strung out on this muscle relaxer or
that pain pill. It’s nuts.
I know men who party all night in the same manner as those women go off
to never-never land during the day. Suffer
the little children; indeed they do. I
ask myself why, why all of the mind-altering substances?
Why do we ingest them like hard candy, like Flintstone vitamins? Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World reveals the answer.
I’m not getting all-conspiratorial on you.
We’ve found our ‘soma.’ Each
person’s ‘soma’ as is different and unique as each person’s reason for
desiring to escape from the real world.
The
big, fat idiot himself, that would be Rush Limbaugh, once said on his radio
show, basically, that non-violent drug offenders should be sent to prison,
period. In his own defense though,
he was most likely high on Oxycotin when he spewed forth such mean-spirited
venom. It’s the legalized drugs,
stupid. They’re the ones whose
harmful side effects cause irreparable damage to the individual and to society.
No one ever harmed anyone by the simple act of smoking a joint.
Pot makes stupid people funny; it makes violent people mellow.
It makes everyone hungry. I
say those are good things. Shaggy
and Scooby Doo agree with me too. I
dare you to go against a pair of cartoon characters.
Briefly,
very briefly, let’s talk reasonable solutions.
We’ve got to stop medicating ourselves so heavily at the first sign of
pain or sickness. Doctors have got
to start screening ‘sick people’ more carefully, watching for fakers out
there to catch the next, big drug. Believe
me, I could call or visit my doctor’s office tomorrow and get over one hundred
pills prescribed for me, muscle relaxers and pain pills. It’s that easy. Don’t
even get me started on drug swapping. It
happens; it happens every day and every night on college campuses around the
country. I know because I was there
to bear witness to it.