THE SENSELESS WAR ON POT

Saints preserve me, I never thought I'd live long enough to hear the
special assistant to the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse
say, somewhat defensively, "Like any mass processing, it's not a perfect
process. But the marijuana we provide and produce is almost entirely free
of seeds and stems."

Government Sez: We've Got Righteous Weed.

The remarks by Steve Gust were in response to a complaint by users of
government-produced medical marijuana (that would be the good kind of
marijuana, the medical kind, rather than the felonious marijuana that leads
to heroin, insanity and bank robberies) that the product they were
receiving was "Mississippi ditch weed."

In my day it was called "Midwestern median strip weed," since less potent
forms of marijuana often grew along our nation's highways -- the hemp plant
being, among other things, a hearty and adaptable weed -- but I am glad to
hear the government defending its own doobies.

It's also interesting that the phrase "seeds and stems" has entered the
general vocabulary. Maybe it will become corporate jargon next --
"Carstairs, this report is nothing more than seeds and stems."

Of course, none of this is funny to the people who have to smoke the
inadequate marijuana. They are using marijuana to alleviate severe pain.
It's not exactly wonderful to lay some inferior pot on someone who wants
relief from the nausea of chemotherapy.

One study, with a small sample and run by a biased source, did indeed
suggest that government muggles was not nearly as potent as street boo.
(I'm including a brief history of marijuana slang in this column as an
educational tool.) But of course, if the stuff were legal, then suffering
people could find their own sources and get their own dosages.

Maybe they are anyway. Let me think for a moment of how many people I know
in the journalism, film, music and art worlds, in the construction trades
and the U.S. military, in the restaurant business and the rag trade, in
dentistry and medicine and law and podiatry, who have smoked marijuana.
Hmm. In percentages, I'd say: just about everyone.

I mean, George Bush was a party guy at a party school during the late '60s.
You telling me he never toked down? I am not believing you.

Clarence Thomas and Newt Gingrich -- you telling me those lads never had a
few puffs? Hey, Tom Daschle and Barney Frank and Ted Kennedy and Dick Armey
- -- do not bogart that joint, my friends.

As for Willie Brown and Terence Hallinan and Barbara Boxer and Gavin Newsom
and Jerry Brown -- it is to laugh. Nobody here but us recreational users,
boss.

I myself -- and this will be a shocker, I know -- used quite a bit of
marijuana. I stopped in 1988, so my support of the legalization of
marijuana is entirely altruistic.

But while we're walking down memory lane, why not stop to remember the
large number of people who are in prison for gigantic amounts of time
because they got caught growing or selling what the government is currently
growing and what many of us have used without fear of legal penalty?

It's the old class system again. The people who do the dirty work also do
the time. (Say, it's just like the prostitution business!) Because the
government has a hair up its astrolabe about recreational drugs, the poor
and the inadequately defended are rattling around hellholes with psychotic
loonies and serial abusers.

It's an outrage and everyone knows it. It's been an outrage for so long
that everyone has forgotten about it except the folks walking the exercise
yards. Making alcohol legal and pot illegal is senseless; everyone knows it
and everyone has other priorities.