Banning Non-Pot
Lest anyone think Wisconsin is ready to jump onto some sort of bandwagon edging toward rationality, local politicians have been falling all over each other recently to expand laws against pot to include non-pot.
It seems the most fiendish villains preying on drug users today are shopkeepers who openly market packages of leafy herbs that are not pot.
Milwaukee Alderman Robert Donovan, drawn like a moth to the light of television news cameras, declares: “Individuals who sell this garbage, who make money off this poison, ought to be hung.”
What in the world is Donovan talking about that should prompt Wisconsin to consider reinstating lynching after abolishing the death penalty 157 years ago?
There are anecdotal reports that some of the chemicals in herbs that are not pot cause increased heart rates, elevated blood pressure, vomiting, shakiness and extreme anxiety.
Oh, damn those purveyors of poison! Capital punishment is too good for someone who peddles something that could make people feel woozy.
None of the local ordinances against non-pot yet include putting sellers to death. The fines in the Milwaukee ordinance range from $100 to $500 for sale or possession. The Waukesha ordinance trumps Milwaukee by increasing fines up to $1,000.
But the scramble by posturing politicians to outlaw something about which they know little or nothing is a perfect illustration of how the War on Drugs—including physically damaging, addictive hard drugs—gets everything exactly wrong.
Let’s say, hypothetically, someone had serious concerns about health problems resulting from someone smoking non-pot—although human health would not seem to be high on the agenda of anyone who advocates killing other human beings to solve a problem.
The worst thing to do would be to outlaw the stuff. That immediately takes non-pot off the shelves of small shops where authorities can purchase it openly and test it for harmful ingredients. If non-pot is found to harm someone, producers and sellers could be held legally liable.
Outlawing non-pot immediately moves all sales underground and puts quality control in the hands of criminals. And if you’re going to have to go to criminals to purchase your non-pot, why settle for non?
Serious,
Intelligent Approach
Actually, the most
intelligent approach I’ve heard for dealing with the harm that drug addiction
causes to individuals and communities came from a cop.
Jack Cole worked for the
New Jersey State Police for 26 years, 14 as an undercover narcotics officer.
Cole became the first executive director of an organization of former and
current law enforcement officials fighting not only the harm caused by drugs
but also the harm caused by the criminalization of drugs.
I met Cole when I
broadcast some looking-back-on-Katrina radio shows from New Orleans in 2007. He
was in town to talk about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which has
grown to 30,000 police officers, prosecutors, judges, prison wardens and FBI
and DEA agents.
The long-range goal of
LEAP is the legalization and regulated selling of all drugs now designated as
illegal. Don’t dismiss the idea as crazy talk by cops who have spent too much
time in their own evidence rooms.
First you should
consider Cole’s long litany of benefits that would immediately flow to all of
us from ending drug prohibition:
Deaths from drug
overdose would drop immediately. Overdose deaths are caused by wild variations
in purity of drugs sold on the street. Drugs sold legally could be regulated
for safety and quality instead of depending upon the ethics of criminals.
No individuals would be
selling drugs on the streets in any neighborhood. There wouldn’t be any profit
in it.
There would be no drug
dealers shooting other drug dealers. Miller and Bud don’t get into shooting
wars over who’s going to supply local taverns. That kind of criminal violence
flourished—guess when?—during alcohol’s Prohibition era.
That’s just the
beginning. Virtually all the community violence associated with the drug trade
is caused by our decision to turn the distribution of drugs over to criminals.
Ending prohibition would end an enormous number of homicides in every city,
including those of innocent children caught in the crossfire.
And, oh yeah, public
health would improve. Treating addiction of everyone as a health problem (as it
now is for the wealthy) rather than a crime (as it now is for the poor) would
open up treatment for everybody.
The last public figure
in Milwaukee with the guts to speak out about the obvious public benefits of
drug legalization was Howard Fuller, before school choice, as director of the
Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services in the late ’80s.
Today’s so-called
political leaders don’t even have the courage to resist expanding prohibition
to include such absurd substances as non-pot.
So you think that adult citizens should be allowed to ingest various mind-altering substances, but not raw milk? Interesting.
The War on Drugs is and always has been the heavy artillery against the poor in the ongoing class war that the rich have been winning for a long time now. That's why you'll never see legalization or decriminalization of drugs in the USA.
So, restaurants should not be able to serve me food with salt in it, but this garbage should be available for anyone to purchase? Do you support disbanding the FDA? Because this "non-pot" is not approved and has not undergone testing. The worst thing about this crap is that is simply not real pot- get the real stuff- at least you know what you're getting. Joel, you're a classic hypocrite. Try, for once, to be consistent. Should we ban and regulate salt and K2, or ban/regulate neither? Those are your only two choices.
Did Joel ever recommend banning/ regulating salt? That sounds like an implausible proposition, as salt is one of the most common molecular compounds on the planet.
@BabyLove- Does it really sound implausible? Get with the program. NYC is already regulating salt in restaurants:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/11salt.html?_r=1
Do you honestly think that Joel McNally will not jump on any nanny-state regulation he can find? (Unless, of course, it involves a pseudo-drug with questionable or unknown ingredients that is marketed to kids...the lack of common sense and consistency on the left is stunning.
@PP: I don't have a problem with banning harmful manufactured food additives that don't exist in nature such as transfats and high fructose corn syrup. Banning common and naturally occuring things (including alcohol, because it's very easy for an individual person to make in their home) such as salt is certainly going too far. I could see banning the sale of K2 to minors. If marijuana were legal, which I favor, I certainly wouldn't want it sold to high-school kids!
One thing I never understood was that you have to show your ID and sign to get pseudoephedrine because of the damn meth-heads, but you can buy hydrochloric acid, which you could seriously mess somebody up with just by throwing some in their face, without having to go through the same procedure!
For the most part I agree with Joel. But we do not have to spend taxpayer resourses to help addicts. Don't classify addiction as an illness but a lifestyle choice. Just let them be addicts which is probably what they want anyway.
Has anyone read the ingredients in the nonpot? rosehips, clematis and other plants such as lavender and dried eculyptus...it's also is used as incense and these shops sell the burners for it. But that's not really why I'm writing. Bob Donovan stated these store owners should be hung? Does he consider the bartenders who serve him his daily intake of liquor at his favorite waterhole, or the owner that they should b hung too? Or did he make this statement on a hangover from hell??? I was also employed at this place, and have witnessed it myself how he "performs" to get free drinks bought for him. Actually I thought he was just another rotted tooth street drunk, but when the owner informed me of who he was, I was shocked. This man has his own addiction problem. And if there's any disbelief, go to Don's Pub any given day of the week and see for yourself. And he's a mean drunk, has started arguements with patrons, etc. And the owner is a known to all smoker, but not of the nonpot kind. Of course, the police district in that area are bought off wth half priced food and free drinks, gunshots have been fired in that place on a rowdy drunk night, and I can bet you that if tis bar was not in Bob's district, he'd be bitching about such a place and attempt a close down. He's aware of ALL the "happenings" at this place including the cocaine dealer who lives across the street, who we'll call Damien, who was always in the establishment doing his dealings there. And the owner knew it too. So let Bobby say what he will, he is not on the side of people, but mostly his drinking buds. As for K2...let it be!!! We'll just drive to Kenosha and Racine county & give our money to them, Milwaukee and the buisness's SURE don't need it, now do they?