Pat Steps In It Again

Pat has gone off the reservation and come out for the legalization of pot. I kind of agree with him, but sadly the message will be lost because the messenger has a lot of baggage.

Perhaps they should make it a misdemeanor. They can make it like a Virginia speeding ticket, just a thousand dollar fine. This way you wouldn't have to list it on a job application. The money could go to support rehab centers. I agree with Pat that currently the harsh laws just fill up our jails with apprentices to study under career criminals.

Having never taken any illegal substances my experiences consists of dealing with old friends and clientele. I subscribe to the lipid theory of anesthesia. Basically your brain is like a circuit board and taking THC (pot) is like spraying PAM on your mother-board. After smoking pot for a long time the brain becomes saturated with PAM: sort of like a well seasoned wok. I noticed some of my old high school friends were showing signs of being continuously coated with a non-stick spray. These guys gradually have their vocabulary reduced to only two phrases, "Wow" and "Far-Out." I didn't need a study from the Rand Corporation to tell me that pot was reducing people to zombies. We just call them burned-out and walk on.

Currently, a person can become felon for possessing a large quantity of pot. That poor slob may escape jail, but will never get a job, rent an apartment, or have a career. They will enter the realm of job, credit, and housing exploitation. They will be forced to live in a mobile home park which is just like prison grad school. We live in an unforgiving society. Thanks to the cyber-revolution, a person's ability to reinvent themselves is nil. They may pay their debt to society, but society never rips up the note.

Our prisons are full, it's the only growth industry we have. As I heard someone say, we need to "start locking up dangerous people and not people we just don't like." Non-violent felons should have their records expunged after ten years. Today there are over three thousand federal crimes; when I was young there were only six. You can't go out of your house without breaking some law, and if you're really careless you can find yourself in jail.

Why is our nation descending into a drug haze? Perhaps it's because the lack of justice has lead to despair. Pat Robertson has a good message. The problem is the media prefers to focus on the messenger.