Pubdate: Sat, 31 Jul 2004 Source: Hartford Courant (CT) Copyright: 2004 The Hartford Courant Contact: http://www.ctnow.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/183 Author: James J. O'Neill Note: James J. O'Neill was a legislative and regulations specialist for the state from 1991 to 2003. Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) THE RETURN OF REEFER MADNESS I had to laugh the other night as my wife and I walked our dog. We were strolling through our nearly all-white upper-middle-class suburb singing, "No, no, no, no I don't smoke it no more/I'm tired of waking up on the floor," from the "No No Song" by Ringo Starr, when what to our wondering eyes did appear but a neighbor sporting a joint in his pickup truck. Spying us, he finished his drag and quickly slid the roach into his truck's ashtray. It did not take "Dragnet's" Joe Friday to crack this case. Any American who came of age during the last 30 or 40 years knows the telltale signs, especially the slow exhalation and the croaky "hello" he gave us, followed by the smell of smoke, but not quite of the Marlboro variety. What was particularly amusing to me was that this incident occurred a day or two after I read an article stating that the federal government was planning to shift some of its anti-drug funds away from cocaine and heroin to marijuana. According to the report, over the years pot has become far more potent than what was available 20 or 30 years ago. The government is now back to claiming that grass is as addictive as hard drugs. The problem with this is threefold: Federal and state officials lost all credibility about marijuana when millions of kids smoked pot in college and did not suffer the ill effects depicted in such monumentally absurd pieces of propaganda as the 1938 flick "Reefer Madness." That particular attempt at stemming the tide of drug abuse was, in fact, great entertainment at midnight shows in college where most of the audience was high and goofing on the film. The second disconnect is that although marijuana has been lumped in the great pantheon of illegal drugs, its effects are decidedly different from such substances as PCP, crack cocaine and methamphetamines, which have all been shown to produce uncontrollable violence in people. I have yet to hear of someone who smoked pot and then ax-murdered his family. The third problem the government faces is that nobody gives a darn what it has to say on the issue of marijuana. The neighborhood pot smoker we encountered is a 50ish, married father who owns his own business and appears to be living the American dream. He knows, as do I and our contemporaries, that nothing bad is really going to happen to him physically or criminally for the casual consumption of a joint. The night after I saw my pothead neighbor, a couple of buddies and I discussed the issue. We decided that marijuana should be regulated so that folks know the strength of the dope they're smoking. We even came up with an easy way of rating the stuff. Rather than apply the confusing color-coding system used in terrorism alerts, feds should use a ranking system we are all familiar with - like gasoline. Pot could be classified as 87, 89 or 92 octane. On the low end would be 87 for people wanting to relax a little or as a precursor to a romantic liaison. An 89 would be for those who suffer insomnia or migraines. The most powerful dosage, 92, would be reserved for people suffering from painful liver cancer and the like. The eggheads in Washington would be wise to realize that a lot of honest, hard-working people in America like to get high. If it's true that this new stuff is really a danger, the government should provide consumers with truth in packaging and focus their efforts instead on the drugs that result in ax murders. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake