A friend told me how he attended a sporting event last weekend with his kids, and some clown lit up a joint exposing everyone around to his second hand smoke. When my friend and several others asked him to put it out. In response the guy got "testy", stating "smoking weed is legal now".
My friend who happens to be a Reserve Deputy Sheriff informed the man of his being in California not Colorado. Then told dopey how if his kids were exposed to one more puff, he would arrest him not only for possession and pubic intoxication, but child endangerment as well. Needless to say dopey extinguished the joint and left the stands for another section. All to the applause of everyone around. The story ends with a call for security to the cheap seats and dopey being led away in handcuffs, once again to the applause of fans.
This story gave me pause for thought in that a proposition like Colorado's is very likely to show up on California's 2014 ballot. So just where do all those anti-smoking Nazis stand on the very real issue of Marijuana smoking causing cancer? Not to mention the valid and totally equatable second hand and collateral smoke issues they so vocally fought to regulate and legislate.
Now let me preface that I have no problem if someone wants to smoke themselves into a weed induced coma safely within their own home or other private property. However, I do believe that every law and restriction that applies to my enjoying a good cigar in a public area, building or restaurant, including all laws that apply to second hand tobacco smoke, should and must be fully applied to any legalization of the smoking of Marijuana.
I also believe that due to the cancer risk associated with the deep inhalation of (what is essentially smoking a piece of rope) unfiltered carcinogenic byproducts, that any and all Marijuana production and sales be taxed in the same way as tobacco products. And once again for the same reasons, all Marijuana smoking products from roach clips to bongs and rolling papers (what can I say, I'm a child of the 60s) be clearly labeled with caution and educational information/warnings as to the health dangers to Marijuana smokers and those anywhere around them. And no, I don't mean a "Dead Head" sticker... Google it!
I further submit there should be larger fines and even imprisonment for anyone violating any Marijuana second hand smoke restrictions, with mandatory incarceration when children are exposed. Just think how dangerous a non-user unaware of a contact high might become behind the wheel. And with we all know of the true harm second hand tobacco smoke does to children and infants, one can only imagine what degenerative effects are multiplied throwing THC into the mix!
Funny, but it looks like the very same people who would criminalize the use of all tobacco products if they had their way, are the same ilk fighting tooth and nail for the legalization of Marijuana! There's a standing belief that the only people calling for the legalization of Marijuana (and other drugs) are primarily those who use them. Perhaps that is why those same people can't or refuse to see the hypocrisy of their beliefs.
But then the not so funny fact is how these same folks happen to also be the vocal progressive liberals calling for the ever widening of government, socialized medicine, forcing everyone to drive electric powered rolling coffins, legalizing prostitution so your daughters can more easily work their way through college (as SEIU unionized hookers) - and of course, the banning of individual firearm ownership.
But alas there are also the millions of AARP members who blindly supported Obama's re-election. All now feverishly calling their Congress and Senate representatives, begging them not to tax the dividends their fixed incomes rely on. And, just found out how AARP (according to the C.B.O.) stands to take in a cool Billion within the first year of ObamaCare.Can you say; Conflict of Interest?
Then there are the union members who now find themselves in a right to work state. Or out of a job altogether because the company is moving to a friendlier local, or perhaps even another country. Add to those progressives who's bosses are forced cut the work force to less than 50, or go to 35 hours max to comply or avoid the cost and regulations of ObamaCare that would otherwise put the entire company out of business.
If you haven't figured it out by now, the Marijuana second hand smoke issue is a parody. The irony is how this whole sorry scenario we now find ourselves in not so long ago would have been rejected as a Hollywood script. Or considered some conspiracy theory, no more valid than a cardboard sign held up by a downtown street prophet citing; "The End Is Near"!
Fortunately our going over the fiscal cliff in reality is far from the end of the world as we know it. The fall will stun some and the sudden stop will hurt others, but as a nation we will survive. The only question is if we will finally learn to look deeper into the issues and candidates than the surface they WANT us to see, consider the second hand smoke, and how it can and will politically and physically harm ourselves - and our children's futures.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
