Leave Us Alone

I am seriously getting tired of these "antidrug" commercials. If I see or hear the words "Regret: My Antidrug" one more time I am going to hurt someone. I don't know who; probably just some random passerby. I really wish the effing government would stop trying to shove their ideals down my throat. I personally see no problem whatsoever with weed, okay? Some of the harder drugs worry me, but I don't mind the kid chugalugging NyQuil in the school bathroom. Also, I'm not going to report him if I walk in on him--and I have--it's not my problem. If the school can't catch his ass without my help, he can do whatever he wants, within reason. If I catch him shooting up, then I may bust his ass, if I'm having a bad day. But to get back to my point...do you know who got marijuana outlawed? It wasn;t just the government. I'm sure you've heard of a man named William Randolph Hearst. He was a big time news publisher in the early 1900's, around the time that the growth and use of hemp (marijuana) became noticable in the United States. To cut a long story short, Hearst had thousands of acres of uncut trees, and he had paper mills to turn the trees into paper for his newspapers. Also around this time, a machine called a decorticator was invented. The decorticator could process three tons of hemp an hour to produce higher quality paper than wood pulp. This meant that Hearst's timber land would be greatly devalued. So as to not waste time, I'll cut the story even shorter: Hearst drummed up opposition to weed by blowing up weed related incidents in his papers, and making up outright lies. This is called "yellow journalism," and it is very bad and fairly common. This led to Congressional hearings on weed, which eventually led to it being not outlawed, but taxed prohibitively--about $100 for selling an ounce to an unregistered person. That'd be about $2000 per ounce today.

In case you didn't quite catch what I was hinting at...A RICH GUY, WITH THE HELP OF THE GOVERNMENT, SCREWED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE OVER. In this case, the stoners. So it was really something we're used to today, but still, wrong is wrong. Cheating and lying are just that--cheating and lying--no matter how you legalize them, if you even try to legalize them.

I'm sure my conspiracy theorist friends want more, so they'll get a bit tomorrow. All the info on Hearst was found in Uncle John's Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader. Admittedly this is probably not my best source of info, but the stuff in their was from another book: It's a Conspiracy by the National Insecurity Council, which may be defunct, as my copy of the Bathroom Reader is from...let's see...Copyright 1999. Not too old, but you never know. I guess I'll go check it out myself. So should you, if you're interested.