Sordid Tales

ALL I WANT IS SOME CHEAP MEXICAN WEED

Man, oh man, am I aggravated to all-Hell. It's been almost a month
now and I haven't been able to replenish my pot supply. I know the
reason, too. It's the goddamned Border Patrol. They've been doing a
kick-ass job lately over there at the San Ysidro crossing. Every time
you turn around, there's another story about another huge bust. A
couple of weeks ago, I read a U-T story reporting that agents at the
San Ysidro and El Centro borders collectively nabbed 10,000 pounds of
pot in one week, and because of busts like this, I can't get my
goddamned hands on any goddamned Mexican weed.

Oh sure, there's still plenty of kind bud floating around. Kind bud
(also known as ganja, indoor, chronic, dank and stank) is a
higher-quality weed. It is potent and pungent and can be grown by
anyone with $500 and an oversized closet. Since kind bud doesn't have
to make that perilous trek across the border, there's plenty of it.
The problem is, I smoke Mexican weed.

Now, admitting that one smokes Mexican (also known as mecky, mexy,
shake or schwag) when one lives in Ocean Beach is tantamount to
social suicide. OB is primarily populated with pot snobs. I can't
tell you how many times I've pulled out my trusty film canister of
schwag during one of our back-alley powwows behind the bar, only to
watch my potsnobbian friends recoil in disgust as if the canister was
filled with infected monkey entrails.

"How can you smoke that shit!?" they howl in disbelief.

And I always have to tell them, "Not that it's anything to you, but I
smoke mecky because it suits my needs better." For one thing, Mexican
is cheaper. It's easily half the price. More importantly, it is a
weaker strain of marijuana than its indoor cousins. Mecky has half as
much THC, and, for me, that's a good thing. I need my weed to be
weaker. I'm a marijuana lightweight. When I smoke kind bud I get
overstoned. Then I can't do anything right: I can't talk, I can't
read, I can't sleep, I can't drive, I can't screw--I can't even write
when I get that fumigated. It took me more than an hour to write what
you've just read because I'm overstoned on chronic at the moment,
which really sucks because I'm behind schedule.

Check this out: Since THC is the active ingredient in pot, and
there's more THC in kind bud than there is in mecky, and the war on
drugs is forcing me to smoke kind bud--then the war on drugs is
making me get more stoned than I want to.

Isn't that a gas? It'd be like blocking the distribution of light
cigarettes, thus making people smoke Marlboro Reds.

I know, I know, some of you are saying that marijuana is illegal and
I shouldn't be smoking it at all. Well, call me an anarchist. Call me
a lefty loon. Call me a non-supporter-of-the-troops-type person. But
I do not recognize the right of any person, group or government to
determine what I do with my body so long as what I do with it doesn't
harm anyone else.

Some people argue that consuming narcotics does harm somebody else.
They say people are dying over the stuff: border agents and police
and politicians on both sides of the border are losing their lives
fighting the war on drugs and are therefore victims of my drug
consumption. They say it's the high demand that creates America's
drug problem, and I couldn't disagree more. There's a high demand for
milk, but we don't have milk wars at the border. Nobody's smuggling
cows in the wheel wells of U-Hauls, no shootouts at the border with
heavily armed milkmen. No, the problem isn't demand; the problem is
the prohibition of something that is in demand, and it is that
prohibition, actually, that is illegal and immoral because it impedes
my constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of, you
know, fun cool shit. Don't misunderstand. I feel terrible for anyone
who dies in the crossfire of this ridiculous war on drugs, but I
absolutely do not feel responsible.

You know what I wonder sometimes? I wonder if there are any Border
Patrol officers who realize the war on drugs is bullshit. I sure hope
so. Sometimes I like to imagine there is this lone agent who believes
prohibition is a colossal mistake. In my mind, he's one of these
activist types, prone to mouth off his opinions in the locker room,
or in the patrol car, or in morning meetings. He gets into heated
arguments with his pro-prohibition colleagues about how, if we
legalize drugs in this country, we could use the tax money to make a
better society: Some if it could be allocated to rebuild libraries
and repair city infrastructure, some of it could go toward
drug-awareness campaigns and the rest could go to rehabilitation and
treatment. Then this free-thinking warrior border agent hero of my
mind would tell his gung-ho drug-hating buddies how decriminalizing
drugs would ultimately untie their hands. How all those wasted hours
searching for drugs could have been better spent searching for
something, you know, something that truly threatens society,
something like--hmm, well let me think about it for a second--oh
yeah, I know, how about they use the extra time searching for guys
with bombs who want to blow up people and buildings with them?

"How about that positive side effect to legalizing drugs?" he would snort.

Oh well, such dreams only lead to disappointment. But thanks for
trying, Free Thinking Warrior Border Agent Hero. I know we're a long
way from drug legalization, but, in the meantime, I was thinking,
maybe you could lay off the weed busts for a bit? All you have to do
is let a little get though so I won't have to ingest more THC than is
necessary and go broke doing it. So I don't walk around overstoned
all the time. So I can make a deadline. Come on, man, can you give a
brutha a break?