Pubdate: Wed, 15 Dec 2004
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2004 The Boston Herald, Inc
Contact:  http://news.bostonherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53
Author: Howie Carr, Herald Columnist
Please: See 'The UMass Amherst MMJ Production Facility Project' for a 
detailed background and timeline along with links to all the documents 
involved at http://www.maps.org/mmj/mmjfacility.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)

IN AT LEAST ONE WAY, ZOOMASS ISN'T GOING TO POT

What a bummer, man. The feds say that the University of Massachusetts
can't, like, grow weed.

That is so totally wrong, dude.

The decision from the Drug Enforcement Administration was faxed  to
ZooMass Friday, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, which The
New York  Times described as "an independent group that favors
legalization of marijuana, particularly for medical uses."

Medical use - yeah, that's the ticket. Like, weed is an herb,  man.
George Washington was totally into hemp. What do you think it means
when  they said "pursuit of happiness?" It's right there, man, in that
thing Nicolas Cage stole in "National Treasure."

How can you pursue happiness when your stash is running low,  man?
Talk about cruel and unusual punishment. How can you get a good riot
going  on the Southwest Quad when you're down to sticks and stems? By
the way, who knew you had to have a license to have pot at  ZooMass?
This is all Bush's fault, dude. If only he'd lost to that, uh,  what
was that other guy's name man, the one with the $8,000 bike and the
snowboard? You know, the one that was in Vietnam. Dude like that had
to be  totally pro-weed, right? You ever seen "Apocalypse Now?"

It's a shame ZooMass won't get to grow its own marijuana. It  would
have given new meaning to the term absent-minded professor. Cheech &
Chong could have endowed a chair for the study of . . . whatever, man.
ZooMass began its zany quest for a marijuana farm three years  ago,
when the president of the stoner school was William M. Bulger, whose
brother Whitey, in addition to being a serial killer, was also at one
point  perhaps the largest illicit drug dealer in New England.

Actually, if it was UMass-South Boston instead of UMass-Amherst, in
the day the professor would have been well advised to get  permission,
not from the DEA, but from Whitey.

The brilliant scholar behind the failed crackpot scheme is Dr.  Lyle
E. Craker, professor of plant biology. He says the government's pot is
"weak" - a chronic complaint in the UMass dorms about even
private-sector ganja. "We wanted," Craker told the Times, "to have a
source independent from the government."

Paging Whitey Bulger. He and a guy named Joe Murray used to have a
pot warehouse on D Street in Southie. The cops grabbed 15 tons there
one day in 1983. They intercepted a Whitey ship, the Ramsland - 36
tons. Hello, Dr. Craker! Why didn't you just pick up the phone and
call Billy Bulger and see if he could have gotten you Whitey's phone
number. I  mean, Billy's admitted talking to him since he went on the
lam.

It's been a tough fall at ZooMass. Some people got, like,  busted for
throwing bleep at the campus cops. Then Bush beat what's-his-name.
Then Dirtbag - er, Dimebag, did the dirt nap.

Think of the spin-offs this could have meant for the school. New
degrees - master of marijuana, bachelor of boo. You could establish a
School  of Culinary Arts, with a major in munchies. Forget polymers -
let's show the  Pacific Rim who's doing state-of-the-art bong
technology. They'll never get the Final Four, but maybe ZooMass could
have snagged the NCAA joint-rolling championship. And how about a new
genetic variation of pot - seedless weed.  How many times have you,
like, bought a new sweatshirt, and then, when you fired up a bone, a
seed explodes and burns a little hole on the shirt and Mom is so
totally torked when you go home for the weekend.

It's all, like, Bush's fault. Totally.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake