THE TEASER USED TO LURE READERS to William Rivers Pitt’s thoughtful editorial on legalized and home-grown pot titled “Homegrown” is a pair of questions:“What is more caustic to this society: marijuana or thousands upon thousands of people consigned to the tender mercies of the penal system? Marijuana or thousands of people suffering and dying in needless and preventable pain?”
Pitt’s piece is the polar opposite of New York Times columnist David Brooks’ recent memoir/warning regarding marijuana. Here is an excerpt from Mr. Pitt that is not being mentioned in the corporate media:
“Colorado and Washington State have already slapped aside the failed notions of Prohibition that have been dead for a century to fully legalize a substance so infinitely less lethal than tobacco and alcohol that it scarcely bears mention.
Alaska, Oregon, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, and Nevada are soon to follow, and the push is on in Delaware, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Vermont to follow suit.
If successful, that represents nearly a third of the country, and one hell of a diverse cross-section, as well . . . and, if successful, the real work can begin: freeing those in prison convicted of crimes that are not crimes anymore, and should never have been crimes, to begin with.”
If you haven’t read Brooks’ memoir/warning, then read my post “david brooks, conservatives, and marijuana” and make sure that you read the brilliant rewrite of Brooks’ piece by Al Fish in the Comments section following my post!
A final thought by one of the 20th century’s more prominent smokedopers, Neil Young: “Home-grown is the way it should be.” The photo above is of Mr Young’s majestically stoned reading of his own Helpless from the 1976 documentary The Last Waltz.
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
