One Hand Jerking (11 page)

Law and Frivolity
—Courtroom dramas of plaintiffs suing TV networks for forcing them to waste time, forgo reading, and remain poorly informed.

The war on drugs is really a war on
some
people who use
some
drugs.

In 2004, the White House anti-drug campaign spent $170 million on insidious propaganda, working closely with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, which was founded and funded by tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical companies.

As long as any government can arbitrarily decide which drugs are legal and which drugs are illegal, then all those individuals who serve time behind bars for illegal drugs are actually political prisoners.

I am most likely one of the very few who actually believed that former president Bill Clinton was telling the truth when he said he had tried smoking marijuana but that he didn't inhale because he wasn't a cigarette smoker and didn't really know how to inhale. That's exactly what happened with me, a non-cigarette-smoker, the first time I tried smoking pot, but of course I persisted until I got it right.

I've been a pot smoker for almost 40 years, but recently I stopped for a month, just as a change of pace, and I had no withdrawal symptoms. I was simply aware at first of all the times I felt tempted, out of habit, to enhance every experience with marijuana. I wanted to smoke a joint before eating dinner, before listening to music, before making love, before going to the movies and before rolling a joint.

On the other hand, according to Dr. James West, outpatient medical director at the Betty Ford Center, “Smoking cigarettes is probably the most difficult addiction to break. Most recovering alcoholics who quit smoking will say that it was harder to quit smoking than to quit alcohol. About 70% of alcohol-dependent individuals are heavy smokers—more than one pack of cigarettes per day—compared with 10% of the population. Alcoholics eventually die from lung cancer more often than from alcohol-related causes.”

The priorities are insane. Cigarettes cause 1,200 deaths every day, in this country alone. Nearly 2,000 young people under the age of 18 become smokers every day in America. And yet, although the World Health Organization
spent three years working out an agreement with 171 countries to prevent the spread of smoking-related diseases, particularly in the developing world, the United States opposed the treaty, including the minimum age of 18 for sales to minors. Around the globe, tobacco now kills almost five million people a year. Within a generation, predicts WHO, the premature death toll will reach ten million a year.

Whereas, with marijuana, the worst that can happen is maybe you'll have a severe case of the munchies and raid somebody's refrigerator.

Boston Globe
columnist Ellen Goodman writes, “Americans are fighting tobacco addiction at home while our government is supporting it abroad. In fact, the administration thinks tobacco companies should be allowed to market overseas in ways that are prohibited here—with everything from free samples to sponsorship of youth events. When it comes to tobacco, we are standing outside the world community like a nicotine junkie on a city sidewalk, huffing and puffing away.”

In October 2003, Health Canada released the results of a study which found that more teenagers smoke pot than cigarettes. Fifty-four percent of 15- to 19-year-olds said they had smoked marijuana more than once. Conversely, cigarette smoking has continued to decline among Canadian youths, with the latest national figures showing that only 22% of teens smoke regularly.

In December, Associated Press reported that, in the U.S., an annual survey known as Monitoring the Future (funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse), tracked drug use and attitudes among 48,500 students from 392 schools, concluding that marijuana remains by far the most widely used illegal drug. It has been tried at least once by 46% of 12th graders and used by more than a third in the past year.

John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, stated at a news conference that surveys in 15 cities have found that more teens smoke marijuana than regular cigarettes. However, the drug czar added, “More kids are seeking treatment for marijuana dependency than all other drugs combined.” And in March 2005, Associated Press reported, “Treatment rates for marijuana nearly tripled between 1992 and 2002, the government says, attributing the increase to greater use and potency. ‘This report is a wake-up call for parents that marijuana is not a soft drug,' said Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. ‘It's a much bigger part of the addiction problem than is generally understood.'”

Both Walters and Riley neglected to mention how many young “addicts” have sought treatment for marijuana dependency as their only alternative to prison time.

For those who are truly dedicated
tobacco
addicts, though, there's a porn Web site featuring
Smokin' Hot Sluts
—“the largest archive of gorgeous girls who love to smoke before, during and after sex.” Internet seekers are invited to “Tell our live babes your deepest, nastiest smoking fantasies, and they'll fulfill your dreams.”

But what could such smoking fantasies possibly be? I quote: “Fuck my smoldering hot ass!” “Lesbian smoke orgies!” “Slide your filter tip deep inside me!” And, as if intended specifically for Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, “Inhale and swallow!”

Trent Lott, who had to resign as Senate Majority Leader for his racist blooper, was also heavily anti-reproductive rights. Concerning legislation banning abortion, he once vowed on the radio, “I will call it up, we will pass it, and the president willl sign it. I'm making that commitment—you can write it down.” The trickle-down immorality of such a promise has been harassment, fake anthrax mailings, segragationist-modelled blockades, violence, death threats and assassination.

Recently, Bob Rowell of the South Jersey Clinic Defense Coalition, responded to a fluff piece about the local anti-choice movement, titled “Gentle Persuasion,” in the
Courier-Post
. In a letter to the editor, he wrote:

“Many local ‘gentle persuaders' have made statements that were supportive of the terrorists who bombed clinics and perpetrated fatal sniper attacks against doctors and staffs. The article was as misguided as publishing a feature on the gentle persuaders of al-Queda. In fact, one can easily compare the rhetoric of the 9/11 attackers and groups like Army of God, Missionaries To The Preborn, and Life Dynamics (supporters of anti-choice sniper James Kopp) and see for themselves.”

Of course, the term pro-choice means exactly what it says. And, just as the Plaster Casters became infamous for immortalizing the erect penises of various rock stars, women who are expecting babies can now immortalize their expanded bellies in all their three-dimensional glory by making plaster belly casts. Proud-Body,
a Colorado company, sells a do-it-yourself kit that allows mothers-to-be to create a belly cast in less than an hour.

But let's say that, like a friend of mine, you're a pregnant woman living in Florida and you enjoy smoking marijuana. She wrote:

“If you test positive at your first visit to a hospital (when all pregnant women are given a blood test), then you must continue to be tested until you're negative. Furthermore, the hospital is required to test you again at the time of birth, and if it's positive, the HRS—that's like Children and Families, the health department—will take your baby and will not give it back until you test negative, and will then continue to give regular tests. This is just one of the state's stupid laws, passed because of the preponderance of crackheads we have here. For the first five months of my pregnancy, I smoked about half a joint a week, and then I didn't smoke at all. I tested negative at the time of delivery.”

On the other hand, if you give birth at home with the aid of a contemporary midwife, it's quite possible that you will be passed a joint to enhance the experience.

In Great Britain, even if you're not pregnant, a motion proposed by female members of Unison—one of England's largest trade unions—called for the legalization of marijuana because it helps women chill out without gaining weight. The motion included this statement: “Cannabis can be used for women to relax and de-stress without calories, in contrast to alcohol or chocolate.”

This is not a new idea. One hundred years ago, Morphine Tea Parties were popular with women. The practice originated in Paris, where there were female morphine clubs. A number of ladies would meet around 4 o'clock every afternoon—who knows, maybe even at 4:20—and tea would be served. The servants would be sent out of the room, and the door would be locked.

Then the guests would bare their arms, and the hostess would produce a small hypodermic syringe. She would administer an injection to each person one by one. Sharing needles was not a problem in those days. And if one injection was not sufficient to satisfy any particular guest, then a second or even a third injection was given.

Recently, however, the exceedingly proper
British Medical Journa
l weighed in negatively on any such practice: “It is only too true that alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, and other supposed means of getting beyond a monotonous daily life are becoming increasingly prevalent among women, and it is also only too true that there is no ruin so utter as a woman's ruin from such causes.

“Opium as a reliever of pain may still be regarded as ‘the gift of the gods,' but for those who use it for its mental effect, it is fraught with the utmost danger, none the less because the one motive may merge so easily into the other, and none the less because of the ease with which the subject of a single administration may stumble into an enthralling habit, for the greater the relief from one, the greater is the danger from the other.”

Meanwhile, the Eugene (Oregon)
Register Guard
reported that what sounded to angry residents like a war zone around dawn turned out to be, not a terrorist attack, but rather just another example of the inhumane insanity of the drug war. Police served a search warrant for the alleged growing of marijuana. They enlisted an armored personnel carrier and 45 SWAT team officers armed with shotguns and automatic rifles to raid a cluster of houses.

But, after throwing flash-bang grenades, kicking in doors, and handcuffing four people—including one nude woman and one woman dressed only in underpants and a T-shirt—for hours in a room in one of the houses, police came up completely empty-handed. The invaders also admitted to having placed a black bag over the head of one of the women until she agreed to cooperate with them. Ah, equality for women at last.

Lucky she wasn't pregnant.

“The business of America is business,” said Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States. No wonder it was the front page of the
Los Angeles Times
Business section that reported the DEA's recent cluster of raids on head shops and Internet sites selling drug paraphernalia, an industry estimated to be worth $1 billion a year.

Several weeks earlier, after tougher laws on paraphernalia went into effect, the California Department of Alcoholic Beverages wanted liquor licenses suspended at ten stores accused of selling “rose tubes”—4-inch-long glass tubes with miniature fake roses—to undercover agents who asked for crack pipes.

Even before then, the war was already escalating, and generating a ripple effect. One student was suspended from high school because he displayed a banner that said “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” although it occurred on a public sidewalk off school property. And a married couple was arrested for contributing to the delinquency of their teenagers because they gave them bongs for Christmas.

Consider the case of Chris Hill. In order to avoid a potential 20-year sentence on drug paraphernalia charges, he accepted a plea bargain and agreed to serve 14 months in prison. His firm, Chills, a distributor of pipe and tobacco accessories, had been named in
Inc
magazine as one of the nation's 500 fastest-growing companies, and prior to his arrest in August 2001, he was chosen as of of America's top 500 young businessmen by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The DEA seized Chills pipes from three Iowa tobacco shops which also sold pro-marijuana posters and books. Agents next went to Florida, raided Hill's business and home, handcuffing him in front of two infant daughters. His home and all vehicles were confiscated, he was fined $500,000, lost his warehouse building and manufacturing equipment, and faced bankruptcy.

The prosecuting U.S. Attorney claimed that Hill's logo—which features a space alien with the words “World Domination”—was evidence of a criminal conspiracy to take over the world. He responded that the prosecutors had been watching too many James Bond movies, adding sarcastically, “Maybe I should get a little white cat and shave my head.”

Since 1990, federal law has made drug paraphernalia violators subject to RICO—Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization—and money laundering charges. Jerry Clark and Kathy Fiedler ran a shop called Daydreams, which turned into a nightmare when they were raided by the DEA, U.S. Postal Inspectors, local cops and sheriff 's deputies—and the RICO act was used against them, so that they faced 10 to 12 years behind bars.

Under federal law, merely manufacturing, distributing or selling non-traditional pipes is enough evidence to be found guilty of paraphernalia offenses. Authorities insist that companies can no longer protect themselves by posting signs or Internet warnings which indicate that their products are intended for tobacco use only.

And so I hereby call to the attention of law enforcement officials an article in the January 27, 2003 issue of
Time
magazine, which states: “At cafés around UCLA and in college towns across the country, students are passing around the hookah, the ancient Middle Eastern water pipe filled with sweetened tobacco. . . .
[I]n the past couple of years, the hookah has been resurrected in youth-oriented coffehouses, restaurants and bars. . . . The Gypsy Cafe, which has been in business for 15 years, serves up as many as 200 hookahs a night at $10 a pipe. At the Habibi, which opened two years ago . . . smokers have rented more than 500 hookahs in a night. . . . Young patrons of the lounges agree that part of the hookah's charm lies in its illicit associations. ‘It looks illegal,' says [a] Gypsy customer, 18, with a grin, sucking on his hookah with the insouciance of the blue caterpillar in
Alice in Wonderland
, ‘but it's not.'”