So a growth lamp (which can be used to grow just about anything indoors), “appearing nervous,” and a secondhand claim of smelling burnt marijuana is enough for the police to storm into your house with their guns drawn.
Yea, Radley, in Pullman the thugs don’t need much to motivate them to show their true colors.
Jim Henley and Jane Galt take offense at having to provide identification and signatures when buying Sudafed and similar decongestants that used to be over the counter:
Jane:
And can I just say that the ritual humiliation of obtaining Sudafed from a drugstore sets every liberty-loving fibre of my patriotic American soul quivering for Revolution? I mean, sure, that would mean even more if I weren’t already reflexively against our nation’s drug laws. But still.
Jim:
Oh God yes. I fairly tremble with rage, and at least once I’ve added a parenthetical “Under Protest” after my name. Reminding myself that the drug store employees themselves didn’t come up with the law barely serves to keep me from launching into a spittle-flecked tirade.
What they both say!
A commenter at Jim’s place notes:
I asked the pharmacy techs about it 3 or 4 times, and they seem to be in total agreement of the need to keep Sudafed out of the hands of the meth chemists.
Why would we not expect a pharmacy tech to be in complete agreement?
First, their job is buttered on the side of government regulation and prescription laws. The more the merrier.
Second, they are no different than most other folks who have drank the drug war kool-aid. I’m sure that they sincerely believe that folks cook meth because they could buy pseudoephedrine in over the counter cold symptom remedies instead of the more realistic view that cooking meth is yet another consequence of the ill-conceived and disastrous ongoing war on drugs.
Scott Thill aptly describes* the current state of the war on drugs:
The war on drugs is a fucking disaster, except for the law enforcement and prison industries, who make a pretty penny off its wrongheaded persecution of small-timers when white-collar cocks grift billions in wars we don’t need using the bodies of those they would save from the horrors of marijuana.
Unfortunately he forgets his own lesson:
Uh, first of all, we’re talking about differentiating weed from heroin and coke, so kudos to Riley for linking the two back together again in attempt to keep the guilt-by-proximity criminalization streak alive.
Sorry Scott, but what you said: the war on drugs is a fucking disaster. Sure, you might get pot legalized someday. You will, though, still be left with a war on drugs that is a fucking disaster perpetrated by a bunch of immoral thugs.
Isn’t it about time to remove the perps from power?
*Also cross-posted here.
Mmmmm, I wonder how many cocaine users might have second thoughts after learning a bit about the pathway from leaf to powder.
Via Cynical-C Blog.
Coworkers, friends and family often look at me very askance when I call out coffee drinkers as druggies. Well, here you go
…on a popular pro-drug Web site, a visitor reported taking seven No Doz tablets, or 1,400 milligrams of caffeine, and compared the effects to a bad trip on LSD.
Then, like many who get carried away with the world’s most popular drug, the person wondered: “Can caffeine really do this?”
It can. And abuse of the legal stimulant is an emerging problem among young people, according to Northwestern University researchers, who recently analyzed three years’ worth of cases reported to the Illinois Poison Center.
Symptoms include everything from nausea, vomiting and a racing heart to hallucinations, panic attacks, chest pains and trips to the emergency room.
How long before the swat teams are hitting your breakfast nook and narcs are lurking in the corners of Starbucks?