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May 16, 2007
Homelessness & Drug Use (Political)
The tendency of humans to engage in illogical behavior was exemplified by two articles appearing on successive pages of the Metro Section of today’s San Francisco Chronicle. The first described new efforts of the Berkeley Mayor and City Council to rid their city of the homeless by enforcing a ban on smoking. Interestingly, they’d made the same connection that first attracted my attention to the relationship between adolescent trials of pot, alcohol, and tobacco: all three agents tend to be tried at the same time in adolescence and are often followed by further use and associated with aggressive initiation of other agents. However, since the Mayor and the Council were merely trying to get rid of a nuisance, they were not inclined to see their actions as either futile or inhumane. Smoking is smoking; it’s all bad, so let’s ban it. The feds couldn’t agree more.
The next article described the beginning of the federal government’s dogged efforts to punish Ed Rosenthal for growing medical pot, which I have contrasted with their far more successful effort to punish Dustin Costa for growing approximately the same number of plants. Further irony is added by the fact that Costa’s thoughts about how an inexpensive ‘Pot 4 Meth’ (or a ‘Pot 4 Booze’) program might have a galvanizing effect on public perceptions.
Sadly, that would require some courageous original thinking from a ‘reform’ bureaucracy which is little more than a pale reflection of the prohibition bureaucracy they are locked into unequal combat with.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at May 16, 2007 11:32 PM