First, Stroger and Daley, two incompetent machine cogs who ought to have a special bond since they would both be digging ditches somewhere if they hadn't been born the sons of the Cook County Board President and the Boss of Chicago, respectively, each had to comment on marijuana decriminalization. It shouldn't surprise anyone who's been reading for awhile, but my position is that anything you can do with gin in this country, you should be able to do with marijuana. I know I'm hopelessly naive and silly, but I figure they're both mood-altering drugs that have proven impossible to prohibit and are clearly used safely for recreational purposes by a whole lot of American citizens. I'm sure there are nuances I don't understand, most of them involving money and clout, but whatever.
None of that matters now anyway, you poor fools, because we are all gonna die. Dead-eyed hippies are going to beat us to death with hash pipes. Manic teenagers are going to play the piano way too fast, and mark my words, there will be cramps and other dance-related injuries. I speak to you, of course, of the next scourge of our cities: SUPER POT.
Yes, friends, SUPER POT (aka "Kush") is like pot, only, like, really really strong and stuff. It gets you really, really high instead of a little bit high like what I'm tentatively going to name "Good Ol' Pot" or what Representative Mark Kirk calls "your father's pot." Then it's Reefer madness time! Chaos! Anarchy! Liberties taken and liberties permitted between young gentlemen and ladies! Lions lying down with lambs lying down with toucans and every last one of them listening to mix tapes of Willie Nelson and Phish!
But don't worry; Mark Kirk's got the solution: longer jail sentences for selling pot. Unless it's, as he puts it, "your father's pot." That stuff's OK, especially when you've had a long day on the floor of the House of Representatives and people are being mean about your Senate campaign. . . . but when you start smoking this Oldsmobile pot, this "Super Kush Pot" or whatever the kids call it these days, well, that's beyond the pale. Kirk says it sells for the same price as cocaine, so it should carry the same jail sentence, which is probably the dumbest reason for doing anything that I've heard all day.
"Kirk says it sells for the same price as cocaine, so it should carry the same jail sentence"
ReplyDeleteThe black dye sold in Hewlett-Packards toner cassettes for their laser printer costs more than cocaine (err, or so I've read). Sooo, according to this logic... :op
If they legalize it, they can tax it. As they have taxed cigarettes out of the atmosphere, Chicago needs a new cash crop they can hit up for revenue.
ReplyDelete2 summers ago I was near Ogdon and Kedzie. (Day-light hours ='s safer as the thugs are still asleep) You know you’re in a crap Chicago neighborhood, when all houses have steel bars on the 1st floor windows and doors. I stopped in a Mom and Pop grocery store to get a soda while waiting for a truck to get loaded and witnessed a crack whore buying 2 blunts and 1 cigarette for $3.40. That’s 1 cigarette, not even a full pack... The clerk waited for the cash and then returned the change and product via a bullet proof carousel door. The clerk actually removed a cigarette from a open pack on a shelf so this is a regular event in that neighborhood. That’s when I realized how badly tax revenue was decreasing on cigarettes as every one seems to be quitting. Cook County has since then again raised taxes on them. No wonder the county wants to legalize grass in some form.
I’m surprised the gang affiliated aldermen and county officials aren’t fighting this. Gangs would then have to register as dealers and get tax numbers! Yea rightttttt !
Selling "singles" is apparently a common way to sell 'em on the side or sell smuggled tax-free cigarettes. There's a lesson here for those of us who think pot should be legalized--we should be cautious in projecting big tax revenues.
ReplyDeleteIf they legalize pot and then slap heavy taxes on it, the way they have tobacco, for instance, then they're going to have smuggling and tax evasion just like the tobacco market does. People won't just forget that the stuff was illegal the year before and they were able to get it then.
"which is probably the dumbest reason for doing anything that I've heard all day"
ReplyDeleteGive it time.