Munz sent us this nonsense from The New York Times as an example of what we may well see all over the panting media as marijuana legalization looms closer to inevitable. Multiple last stands to keep the killer weed illegal will be made by the drug enforcement industry, the incarceration industry, the spurious and almost discredited rehab industry, and folks who just like to throw other folks in jail, not to mention the ever adaptable doctors who, after condemning dope for close to a century, couldn’t wait get their beaks wet with $100 marijuana cards when medicinal marijuana became a reality.
“It was as if she woke up one day and decades of her life had disappeared.
Joyce, 52 and a writer in Manhattan, started smoking pot when she was 15, and for years it was a pleasant escape, a calming protective cloud. Then it became an obsession, something she needed to get through the day. She found herself hiding her addiction from her family, friends and co-workers. I would come home from work, close my door, have my bong, my food, my music and my dog, and I wouldn’t see another person until I went to work the next day,” said Joyce, who like most others in this article asked that her full name not be published, because she does not want people to know about her past drug use. “What kind of life is that? I did that for 20 years.”
She tried to stop, but was anxious, irritable, sleepless and lost. At one point, to soothe her cravings, she took morphine that she found at her dying father’s bedside. She almost overdosed. Two years ago, she checked into the Caron Foundation, a treatment center in Wernersville, Pa. Even there, she said, some other addicts — cocaine and heroin users or alcoholics — downplayed her dependence on marijuana.
“The reality is, I was as sick as them,” Joyce said. She now attends Alcoholics Anonymous, which is also open to drug addicts, and recently married.
Smoking pot, she said, “was a slow form of suicide.”
Click here to read more of this ill-informed crapola, and then reflect that the debate is over. The prohibitionists have lost the drug war. Those lying motherfuckers had it their way for some eighty years and couldn’t have made a worse mess. Now fuck off. It’s our turn.
The secret word is Falsehood
Walter Cronkite – RIP
Oh, people will get themselves addicted to anything. It's bad when that happens, but silly to blame it on substances. I had to quit getting loaded and I'm grateful for the help I was given. Just as much as we need to get over the idea that prohibition will prevent addiction we also need to get used to the idea that addiction is a perfectly ordinary human problem. I would suggest that doctors are only human and probably don't know any more than the rest of us. Doctors hate it when you say that.
ReplyDeleteI will say that the woman in the profile sounds a lot like my sister. She went from being the most boring person in the entire world to being the most angry controlling person in the entire world. Not sure which I liked better.
Man what a flashback! That article could have been written anytime in the last 70 years. Moderately less hysterical then the vintage stuff but otherwise the same.
ReplyDeleteAll any prohibition has ever done is make lots of money for the law and the criminals while making it harder for the true addicts to get help. Given how entrenched the drug warriors have become I'm not as optimistic as Mr. Farren that the drug war is coming to a end.
Sorry, Mick. You're wrong on this one.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with the NY Times. We need to keep marijuana illegal or else we suffer the possibility that an increased number of Americans will become addicted to pot.
It only makes sense, people! We need to keep pot illegal for the very same reason that we outlaw other potentially addictive substances like alcohol, tobacco, pornography, fast motorbikes, and Xanax.
(What's that now? We what?! No way... But then the article doesn't make any sense. Huh. Okay, whatever.)
Never mind.
what kind of addiction is from marijuana? same when you are somewhere in the nature...trees, birds singing...are you then addicted to the non-consomption society?
ReplyDeleteit's a profit that creates the laws today, not a human soul.
TELEVISION IS GATEWAY DRUG FOR TWO DEBATES
ReplyDeleteIT was as if he woke up one day and decades of his life had disappeared.
--Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times
"Matt" is a recovering television addict who went for rehabilitation over two years ago and is currently not watching.
Matt, 37 and a writer in Portland, started watching TV when he was 15, and for years it was a pleasant escape, a calming protective cloud. Then it became an obsession, something he needed to get through the day. He found himself hiding his addiction from his family, friends and co-workers.
“I would come home from work, close my door, have my American Idol, my food, my music and my dog, and I wouldn’t see another person until I went to work the next day,” said Matt, who like most others in this article asked that his full name not be published, because he does not want people to know about his past television use.
(I don't know about anyone else, but I couldn't help reading this article without seeing "Television" or "American Idol" substituted for "Marijuana." - a far more real addiction that affects probably 80% or more of Americans.)
"Watching TV," he said, "was a slow form of suicide."
This article is some hilariously blatant corporate "operation mockingbird" style shit.
With marijuana, "it’s going to take some real fatalities for people to pay attention," Dr. Volkow said. "Unfortunately that’s the way it goes."
ReplyDeleteWhat a odious bitch. (Not to mention that she will be waiting a long time for those deaths she is hoping to see from Marijuana).
But don't get your hopes up for legalization. Ain't gonna happen. As Uncle Bill used to point out, the drug laws are part of the control machine -- and the cowardly lawmakers won't lift a finger to change them.
Also, since you mentioned Walter Cronkite in this post, it should be mentioned that he was pro-legalization.
ReplyDeleteHe did fund raising for the Drug Policy Alliance, and supported NORML.
(See Most Trusted Man In America, Also Supported Marijuana Law Reform)
Marijuana seems to give people a problem with math, though - she started when she was 15, did it for 20 years and went to rehab when she was 50?
ReplyDeleteA lot of fifty year olds wake up one day and decide they've wasted their entire life. The phenom even has a name - mid-life crisis. It has nothing to do with dope, just the eerie feeling that although you enjoyed your bong, food, music and dog, your accomplishments don't match up to Einstein or Gandhi or Adam Lambert. Maybe she should unwaste her life, maybe it's just an illusion, but either way it's nothing to do with pot, and the only way it is "a slow form of suicide" is the same way everybody else is doing it: Traveling into the future on a time machine that goes forward one second every second you're on the journey.
It's true that marijuana has been the root of many social problems, but it also can be use as medicine. There are some scientific researches that shows that it helps people who are suffering illness like Parkinson's disease and obesity.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, NY times has serious articles.