From: John De Armond Subject: Re: End of thread for me. Date: 2000/06/28 Message-ID: <395AB2A5.41045507@bellsouth.net> Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Lon VanOstran wrote: > > AF Rigger wrote: > > > > Pot Heads aren't bad! Crack Heads are!!!!!!!! > > The distribution system is mostly the same, No they're not. Most of the crack is imported by "cartels". Most pot is grown domestically, especially since the hybrids have gotten so good. Crack is bought from a street dealer. Pot is normally traded through a network of friends. >and the greatest contributor > to crime in this country. No business will survive without customers, > thus the customers are responsible for the evil done by drug dealers. > That is my not so humble opinion. You need not like it, but I'm afraid > you will need to live with the fact that many of us consider users > guilty of the murders committed by drug dealers. If you believe there is > no God, and that justice will not be done, you had better be right. The problem is, Lon, you don't jack-shit about pot smokers other than the propaganda that you've observed. I'm probably wasting my time but I'll do so anyway, explaining what I KNOW about pot and not what I've heard. With the exception of a glass of wine on New Years, I'm a tee-totaler so don't try to attack this post as the output of a pothead. Most of my friends smoke pot. That's been the case since college. I suspect that the large number of my friends who smoke pot do so as a self-selection process since I prefer to be around fun, intelligent, creative and accomplished people. Indeed, it got to the point with my engineering company that I almost would ask about pot use with candidates, the preference being given to those who said "yes". I hope that you can pull off the demagogic blinders long enough to make the same distinction between recreational pot users and hard core pot heads as is made between casual drinker and booze heads. I'm obviously talking about casual users and not stoners. Pot, like booze in excess will turn the brain to jelly. I have no interest in being around jelly people regardless of the cause. In terms of impairment, there is no debate that the type of impairment caused by pot is fundamentally different than by booze. Pot does NOT impair the motor skills until one is three sheets to the wind. Numerous academic studies as well as a rather famous test done by Car & Driver magazine about 10 years ago demonstrated that. C&D rented the Transportation Research Center in Ohio and set up a test whereby volunteers got progressively stoned on pot and then drove a variety of test courses. Then the same test was done with booze. What they found was that while booze affected the judgment and motor skills of drivers in the expected way, pot did not. The pot smokers could still maintain their driving skills and judgment long after they were so stoned as not to want to bother with the test anymore. Given that a certain percentage of the population is going to drive impaired, I'd ten times rather it be on pot than booze. Which brings up the next point. Given that I have to be in an environment where there are stoned people, i'd MUCH rather be around pot smokers than boozers. Pot makes the user mellow, creative, laid back, unmotivated and so on. Booze makes people stupid and aggressive. I know that in the presence of a bunch of pot smokers, I'll never have to worry about some guy getting his manhood in a snit and try to prove how big his is with his fists. Some other things that I know. If I have a party at my house and the drug of choice is pot, as opposed to booze, then I know that: * I don't have to worry about anyone getting sick and puking on the carpet. * I don't have to worry about anyone puking all over the bathroom. * I don't have to worry about some little "big man" starting a fight. * No one will get loud and belligerent. * Since most adults I know smoke using either a bong or glass pipe*, I don't have to worry about some drunk dropping a cig on the furniture and setting it on fire. * No one will take out half the guest's cars as he tries to drunkenly get his car out on the highway. * If I ask for the keys from a guest because I think he's too high to drive, the response will be "Oh yeah, right. Cool" instead of the person considering it an invitation to fight. * Anyone who over-uses will simply go to sleep. * No hangover in the AM. * Pot smoke smells a hell of a lot better than either tobacco smoke OR stale booze. (Forget the stair-step argument too. Even government-sponsored studies show that the real 'stair step drug', if there is one, is tobacco.) > > Like the store owners who tell their children to "say no to drugs" and > then prove they don't really mean it by demonstrating a will to profit > from drug use, You can't hide from reality. You can only ignore it. The reality is, Lon, that the so-called drug war is really a Drug War against the Constitution. It has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with power. Evil Pot and other drugs is the only tool the statists have found to reliably strip away one Constitutional protection after another. Almost any level of state-sponsored repression or terrorism is "OK" as long as it has a drug connection. Can anyone imagine tolerating middle-of-the-night home invasions by jack-booted state thugs operating under the color of law if it DIDN'T involve evil drugs? Can you imagine the storm-troopers being allowed to bust down someone's doors on account of a stolen TV? The fact is, Lon, that some segment of the population is going to choose to use mind-alterning drugs, be it pot or booze or tobacco. Prohibition proved that no amount of government repression will change that fact. What Prohibition did was establish the Mob and planted the seed of distrust of the government and the ignoring of its laws. Drug Prohibition has done the same thing all over again, only worse. At least back then, the government recognized that it had no authority to prohibit booze use without a constitutional amendment. Modern government, and those like you who support it, no longer bother with such annoyances. Like the old saying goes, "It's not about drugs, It's about freedom." I thought that someone as smart as you would realize that. I have fought for years for the legalization of pot and the decriminalization of all other drugs NOT because I have any desire to promote said use but because I love freedom and am extremely frightened at how fast what few freedoms we have are being destroyed by the drug war on the Constitution. * Joints are for kids and those who sneak around. Adult casual users who smoke in the comfort of their own homes usually use a glass pipe or a bong because the smoke is more pleasant and is neater. John From: John De Armond Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Subject: Re: End of thread for me. Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 22:21:25 -0400 Lon VanOstran wrote: > AF Rigger wrote: > > > > Pot Heads aren't bad! Crack Heads are!!!!!!!! > > The distribution system is mostly the same, No they're not. Most of the crack is imported by "cartels". Most pot is grown domestically, especially since the hybrids have gotten so good. Crack is bought from a street dealer. Pot is normally traded through a network of friends. >and the greatest contributor > to crime in this country. No business will survive without customers, > thus the customers are responsible for the evil done by drug dealers. > That is my not so humble opinion. You need not like it, but I'm afraid > you will need to live with the fact that many of us consider users > guilty of the murders committed by drug dealers. If you believe there is > no God, and that justice will not be done, you had better be right. The problem is, Lon, you don't jack-shit about pot smokers other than the propaganda that you've observed. I'm probably wasting my time but I'll do so anyway, explaining what I KNOW about pot and not what I've heard. With the exception of a glass of wine on New Years, I'm a tee-totaler so don't try to attack this post as the output of a pothead. Most of my friends smoke pot. That's been the case since college. I suspect that the large number of my friends who smoke pot do so as a self-selection process since I prefer to be around fun, intelligent, creative and accomplished people. Indeed, it got to the point with my engineering company that I almost would ask about pot use with candidates, the preference being given to those who said "yes". I hope that you can pull off the demagogic blinders long enough to make the same distinction between recreational pot users and hard core pot heads as is made between casual drinker and booze heads. I'm obviously talking about casual users and not stoners. Pot, like booze in excess will turn the brain to jelly. I have no interest in being around jelly people regardless of the cause. In terms of impairment, there is no debate that the type of impairment caused by pot is fundamentally different than by booze. Pot does NOT impair the motor skills until one is three sheets to the wind. Numerous academic studies as well as a rather famous test done by Car & Driver magazine about 10 years ago demonstrated that. C&D rented the Transportation Research Center in Ohio and set up a test whereby volunteers got progressively stoned on pot and then drove a variety of test courses. Then the same test was done with booze. What they found was that while booze affected the judgment and motor skills of drivers in the expected way, pot did not. The pot smokers could still maintain their driving skills and judgment long after they were so stoned as not to want to bother with the test anymore. Given that a certain percentage of the population is going to drive impaired, I'd ten times rather it be on pot than booze. Which brings up the next point. Given that I have to be in an environment where there are stoned people, i'd MUCH rather be around pot smokers than boozers. Pot makes the user mellow, creative, laid back, unmotivated and so on. Booze makes people stupid and aggressive. I know that in the presence of a bunch of pot smokers, I'll never have to worry about some guy getting his manhood in a snit and try to prove how big his is with his fists. Some other things that I know. If I have a party at my house and the drug of choice is pot, as opposed to booze, then I know that: * I don't have to worry about anyone getting sick and puking on the carpet. * I don't have to worry about anyone puking all over the bathroom. * I don't have to worry about some little "big man" starting a fight. * No one will get loud and belligerent. * Since most adults I know smoke using either a bong or glass pipe*, I don't have to worry about some drunk dropping a cig on the furniture and setting it on fire. * No one will take out half the guest's cars as he tries to drunkenly get his car out on the highway. * If I ask for the keys from a guest because I think he's too high to drive, the response will be "Oh yeah, right. Cool" instead of the person considering it an invitation to fight. * Anyone who over-uses will simply go to sleep. * No hangover in the AM. * Pot smoke smells a hell of a lot better than either tobacco smoke OR stale booze. (Forget the stair-step argument too. Even government-sponsored studies show that the real 'stair step drug', if there is one, is tobacco.) > > Like the store owners who tell their children to "say no to drugs" and > then prove they don't really mean it by demonstrating a will to profit > from drug use, You can't hide from reality. You can only ignore it. The reality is, Lon, that the so-called drug war is really a Drug War against the Constitution. It has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with power. Evil Pot and other drugs is the only tool the statists have found to reliably strip away one Constitutional protection after another. Almost any level of state-sponsored repression or terrorism is "OK" as long as it has a drug connection. Can anyone imagine tolerating middle-of-the-night home invasions by jack-booted state thugs operating under the color of law if it DIDN'T involve evil drugs? Can you imagine the storm-troopers being allowed to bust down someone's doors on account of a stolen TV? The fact is, Lon, that some segment of the population is going to choose to use mind-alterning drugs, be it pot or booze or tobacco. Prohibition proved that no amount of government repression will change that fact. What Prohibition did was establish the Mob and planted the seed of distrust of the government and the ignoring of its laws. Drug Prohibition has done the same thing all over again, only worse. At least back then, the government recognized that it had no authority to prohibit booze use without a constitutional amendment. Modern government, and those like you who support it, no longer bother with such annoyances. Like the old saying goes, "It's not about drugs, It's about freedom." I thought that someone as smart as you would realize that. I have fought for years for the legalization of pot and the decriminalization of all other drugs NOT because I have any desire to promote said use but because I love freedom and am extremely frightened at how fast what few freedoms we have are being destroyed by the drug war on the Constitution. * Joints are for kids and those who sneak around. Adult casual users who smoke in the comfort of their own homes usually use a glass pipe or a bong because the smoke is more pleasant and is neater. John From: John De Armond Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Subject: Re: End of thread for me. Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 14:08:51 -0400 Hugh wrote: > The difference is, tobacco and booze are both difficult for the average > person to "grow" on his own. Boy, I can tell you're not from the South :-) Think White Lightning. Think Hooch. Think 'Splo. Think fire in the hole :-) Actually in the mountains around here, tobacco farming is amazingly like pot farming. Government subsidies make it profitable to grow even tiny plots. Tobacco will grow almost anywhere so out in the country, you see little plots scraped out of the rocky hillside. Same thing with pot. And with the (indirect, via driving the price up) government subsidy, pot, too, is profitable to grow on small plots. > Both are revenue producing agents for the > government. Both produce huge income to the companies producing them. > Pot, on the other hand, can be grown by anybody in their home. This is > why I believe the government is and has been so down on pot. Given the > choice, I wonder if booze consuming people would choose pot instead. Actually the reefer war has a much more sordid origin. Around the turn of the century, hemp was giving cotton a run for the money. The Southern power brokers didn't like the competition. They teamed up with the prohibitionists (the anti-pleasure league :-( to ban the growing, import and processing all forms of hemp including the kind that makes THC. That was bad enough but as usually happens, the politicians quickly recognized a new power base and quickly turned the campaign from one of corrupt trade policy to one of corrupt drug control policy. That is, of course, a 2 paragraph summary of what it took another author a whole book to explain. I just hit the highlights. > I > do take issue with the no hangover statement. One of our young engineers > regularly smoked pot on weekends. On monday morning, he showed a lot of > signs of "hangover". Find out what ELSE this guy consumes. I'll be that there's some booze or speed in the mix. Or else this guy gets wasted the moment he comes home on Friday and stays that way until it's time to go to work. Of course, that's not recreational use. > I also think law enforcement would have a tough > time with pot and driving while under the influence. Booze is easy to > prove, pot is not. Actually, if we decide to deal with the problem correctly, the effects of either subject are equally easy to detect. The correct method is for the cop to measure impairment. Several companies sell handheld impairment testers what reportedly work well. These gadgets measure motor skills, coordination and mental impairment. They use a variety of techniques but the most common is to require the target to perform some combination of actions involving coordination, short term memory and alertness. They're cheaper than Intoximeters and have been accepted in every court jurisdiction where they've been tried. With the impairment tester, the target is tested directly for an impaired ability to drive instead of the presence of a chemical in his blood or breath. Impairment caused by lack of sleep, illness, OTC drugs and other causes are equally well detected - something the cops can now deal with poorly if at all. > I'm not advocating the use of pot, I just put it in > the same class as booze. Legalizing small home use production would kill > the street sales. This at least would allow the street sales of more > potent and damaging drugs to be nailed. This would allow us to ship the > street sellers off for 25 or more years of solitary confinement. It > wouldn't take long before the pipeline would dry up. Maybe I'm way off > base on my take on it but I really don't see any difference between a > guy smoking pot for relaxation or a guy downing booze. > Hugh We mostly agree on this much. I want to see any drug with a market sold over the counter at prices so cheap that even the street bum can afford them if he so desires. This acknowledges the obvious fact that there will always be some number of people who can't tolerate reality and will use something to screw up their minds. What OTC sales would do is a) completely destroy the mob/gang system by removing the obscene profits from the business, b) it would remove the "mystique of the prohibited", what draws a bunch of kids in, from the drugs, c) it would remove most of the motivation for street crimes because there would be no need to steal to support a habit, d) the worst of the users would fairly rapidly kill themselves with the stuff which would cleanse the gene pool and finally, e) it would remove the justification for a standing army deployed against the citizenry and the Constitution. The only down side that I can think of is that the anti-enjoyment segment of the population would become very frustrated. In science, one of the basic tenants is that you postulate a theory, contrive an experiment and if the experiment doesn't jive with the theory, you alter the theory and try a different experiment. The ill-advised booze prohibition experiment failed miserably and left a legacy of mobsterism, bootlegging, government corruption and the undermining of respect for government. The drug prohibition experiment has failed with similar results, but with the added consequence of destroying individual liberties and shredding the Bill of Rights. But this time, the government and its civilian sympathizers continue to do the same old experiment again and again and again. Reminds me of that old joke about the Pollock who kept watching the same car crash on video tape over and over. When asked why, he says "I'm hoping that next time he won't crash." Let's alter the theory and try another experiment. John From: John De Armond Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel Subject: Re: Beware of Baja Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:25:09 -0500 Message-ID: <f6n3o35eplu27r65he59m58qfrl4k3l7ls@4ax.com> On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 07:06:53 GMT, Robert Allison <rimshot27@spamless.net> wrote: >That is all I am doing. My nephew still smokes it as do many >of my friends and they are paying about 10 dollars A GRAM for >regular weed and much more for higher quality. I was shocked >by this because when I quit using I was getting pot for about >50 an oz. or about 400 for a pound. That was 17 years ago. A friend who's loaded and smokes is paying about $400 an ounce for a name brand (yeah, pot has trademarks :-) that is custom-grown to his order. It has an odd, edgy odor, somewhat unlike regular pot that has a pleasantly sweet odor. I was shocked at the price. > >35 years ago, I was getting pot for 30 bucks for a KILO! >Inflation! No kidding. Makes one want to set up a hydroponic farm in the spare bedroom and grow a few plants. :-) With these new LED grow lights, one could do it without the power company being able to nark on you. And without the drug gestapo being able to see it with their infrared viewers. Re: the good old days. Another friend showed up at my house in the mid-70s with two paper grocery sacks full of weed. He'd made a "group buy" and wanted to use my triple-beam lab balance to cut it up. I didn't have a particular problem with that except that the chief deputy lived across the street. If he'd seen us he'd have demanded a cut. > >What my friends tell me is that the pot is FAR stronger now >than it was back then. Yep. What's really funny is that major hybridization work to enhance THC concentration was done at UofTenn's experimental farm. Don'tcha just love it? State money going to perfect stronger weed. The stoutest stuff is now so strong that folks are smoking it with what looks like a glass crack pipe except that it has a "carburetor" hole on the side. The pipe holds a tiny pinch no larger than a green pea. It is consumed in only 2 or 3 long tokes. Amazing. John |
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