DUMBER THAN DUMB

THEN WHY NOT COCAINE AND OPIUM?

WISCONSIN DITCH HEMP

Monday,  8:30 AM.  5 degrees F, wind W, light with stronger gusts.  The sky is lightly overcast.  The humidity is 70% and the barometer is trending up, currently at 30.26".  It looks like it will be a cold but pretty nice winter day.
   Hawaii thinks it can pay off its debt by exporting commercially grown marijuana, and Colorado and some other states see taxing legalized pot as a revenue bonanza.  If that is true, then why not cocaine and opium?  Bad ideas all.
   I have watched the debate over marijuana use and its legalization over the years.  It is an illegal drug that has been used pretty openly for decades.  It was around when I was in college in the late '50s and early 60's.  Tramping through the farm fields and woods pheasant hunting back then I would come across Cannabis sativa plants growing twelve feet high,  artifacts of the days when hemp was grown in Wisconsin to make rope and cloth (rope hemp has a relatively low amount of THC, the pscho-reactive compound in Cannabis sativa). There were always jokes about "smoking rope"when I was a kid.  And in the late '60's when I was the Assistant Director at the Milwaukee Mitchell Park Conservatory (the "Domes") I answered one druggy reporter's snide question, "What kind of high can you get from eating or smoking all the plants growing in Milwaukee parks?" My answer; "Lots of different highs and other reactions, most probably including death." Ingesting unknown or unfamiliar plants is nothing to take lightly.
   I never tried pot, even though it was around and used by a few of my acquaintances at the University, because I saw the results of their using it.  They came to class stoned, made spectacles of themselves and eventually dropped out.  There are few things  dumber than stoners thinking they are  smart.  Add to my own early experiences the fact that pot is obviously a gateway drug to worse things, and I am very much against its legalization, regardless of the libertarian argument.  A society replete with stoners and worse is not a pretty sight and highly unlikely to achieve greatness, or even solve its everyday problems.  The same can be said about alcohol abuse, but alcohol in wine and beer has been around as a food preservation method since the beginnings of civilization, and we don't need to add to its spinoff problems.
   I am something of a herbal junkie, so can understand the desire to use natural plant products to improve human health and performance.  I might even go so far as to legalize the growing of drug related plants in one's own backyard, and their use in an unrefined state for personal consumption. And probably well regulated medical use as well.
   However the legalization of recreational drugs such as  Cannabis, or any other addictive, deleterious drug, is a bad idea in general.  And government using recreational drugs of any kind as a general revenue source, and encouraging their production and use  is totally counterproductive, and dumber than dumb.