An NPR juxtaposition: Blitzed on cocaine and adrenaline.

I made this screen shot of my iPhone as I was reading in bed this morning. The article, at NPR.com, was "The 10 Most Popular 'Fresh Air' Interviews Of 2017":

Question: "Why is Barack Obama drinking beer at 11am?"

Answer: He's in Bavaria, acting Bavarian.

Angela Merkel... treated him to a full Bavarian breakfast of white sausages, pretzels and foaming lager... Bavarians don’t down a quick pint before heading to the office every morning. It originates in Frühschoppen — a local tradition of meeting for a drink late in the morning on Sundays and holidays. According to Bavarian custom, the sausages cannot be eaten after 12 noon, because no preservatives are used and they are made fresh every day. Therefore those who wish to wash their sausages down with a beer must get supping before that time. The local saying is that the sausages must not be allowed to hear the church bells chime noon.

I have too many Obama tags already and it's too late in The Story of Barack Obama to make an "Obama eats food" tag, so I'm just going with the closest thing I've got. It begins with "Obama eats..." anyway. Too bad I don't have "Obama drinks beer." There was that famous "beer summit" that maybe half of the people have forgotten by now. That would have been the time to create an "Obama drinks beer" tag. So I'm going with "Obama and drugs." Close enough, no?

"To the extent that large-scale use of prosecutorial discretion is ever appropriate, it is surely so..."

"... in the case of helping people whose only violation of the law is fleeing poverty and oppression under terrible Third World governments. Few other offenders have such a compelling moral justification for breaking the law. I strongly support the legalization of marijuana and the abolition of the War on Drugs more generally. But illegal immigrants violating the law to escape Third World conditions are considerably more deserving of our compassion than college students violating it to experiment with marijuana or other illegal drugs. If exemption from prosecution is acceptable for the latter, it should be permitted for the former too."

Writes Ilya Somin in "Obama, immigration, and the rule of law."

Obama's annual reunion with the group that still calls itself "The Choom Gang."

The NYT reports:

For a reputed loner, Mr. Obama has remained remarkably close to a trio he met as a teenager at Honolulu’s prestigious Punahou School — boys of Hawaii’s year-round summer with whom he played basketball, bodysurfed, drank beer and, like so many other young islanders in the 1970s, smoked pot, the “choom” of that long-ago nickname....

The annual gatherings perhaps speak to Mr. Obama’s greater need for their connection now that he has what is called the loneliest job in the world...

That first year, [Mike] Ramos said, “I remember coming home from a golf outing and literally starting to cry,” so emotional was the contrast he felt between their friendships and the “transactional” ones he said he had since formed as a businessman. “For me it’s the unconditional love, it’s the nontransactional nature of the relationship — that enduring quality — that is something that I really value,” he said.

Are your friendships so transactional you could cry?

IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee said:

They didn't start meeting annually unti 2004, when Obama decided to run for Senate and he needed a fresh group of friends for his biography....

It says something pretty funny about politics when an article about the Presidents's friends has a quote about the importance of friends from the "long time" political strategist. And yes, Axelrod was Obama's strategist when Obama decided to start the annual get together with them.

Doesn't that just scream "these friends are part of a political strategy! This article is part of that strategy!" 

The transactionality of nontransactional friends.

Who is tempted by Colorado pot tourism?

Have you been waiting since the 60s for pot to become legal? Are you, like me, in your 60s and from the 60s and hoping that the day will arrive when you can walk into a nice little shop, buy some marijuana, and consume it without the need for any of the old rebellious spirit that enlivened us when we were Flower Children? Do you, unlike me, think that day has come if only you go to Colorado?

As Colorado becomes the first state in the nation to allow recreational marijuana sales beginning Jan. 1, a budding pool of "potrepreneurs" have high hopes for an influx of out-of-town pot tourists.

Colorado Highlife Tours, which promises “fun, affordable and discreet” cannabis-centered excursions, is expanding its private and public limo and bus tours.

“You’ll be able to buy a little pot here and there, see a commercial grow, visit iconic Colorado landmarks and take lots of pictures,” said company owner Timothy Vee. “It will be like a Napa Valley wine tour.”

As you may know, I'm a travel skeptic, and these potrepreneurs and "Highlife Tours" only heighten my aversion. Imagine these guys wrangling you with a crowd of shambling boomers and bullshitting about the fine varietals of local weed. But you could put together your own road trip to Colorado. In fact, Colorado is the main place I've headed on my personal road trips, even before I married Meade, who has family in Colorado. Despite our lack of general enthusiasm for travel, we do drive to Colorado, and now when we drive to Colorado, as we will again soon, you're going to think we're pot tourists.



That was back in 2011, wandering around Leadville, catching some shots of the scenery, including a pot shop — medical only back then. We intend to return to Colorado soon, but we're not going to enter these shops, now open for "recreational" users, and I don't like the fact that going to Colorado triggers a suspicion that that's what we're doing.

It's still a federal crime to possess marijuana, and if I were inclined to commit crimes, I wouldn't do it as conspicuously as openly traveling to Colorado, going into a shop where I may have to wait in a line of aging Boomer pot tourists, showing my ID, and perhaps appearing on surveillance cameras. I'd try to be inconspicuous, which means I'd stay home and use the same damned black market that's been available all along.

But I'm not inclined to commit crimes, and I haven't so much as touched an illegal drug since a stranger tried to pass me a joint when The Kinks played the Felt Forum in 1974, which was probably before the President of the United States even began taking drugs.

Having voted to legalize marijuana, Coloradans now vote to tax it.

Heavily.

Well, of course. You legalize it so you can tax it. To repurpose an old Obama-and-marijuana quote: That was the point.



Obama's appearance arrives at 0:57, after which a commenter (Howard Fineman) opines: "One of the reasons Barack Obama is so popular, especially among younger people, is that he seems so real, he seems to acknowledge the reality of things. It's kind of almost like a dog whistle kind of thing. Older people can't hear it. Younger people hear it. And that's one of the things that they hear. He seems to be willing to be honest."

I need some medical marijuana for my hearing. I'm old. I was old back in 2006 when that clip came out. Yes, I voted for him, but not because I believed he was a new kind of honest. And now, in 2013, watching that, what I hear — on the sound wavelengths that penetrate my old head — is the word "seems," screeching out of Fineman's word montage: He seems so real... he seems to acknowledge... He seems to be willing to be honest.

"Seems" and "willing."

Willing... like: Okay, I'll go along with this looking-honest bullshit for you folks for a while. So follow me, little puppies. I've got a new kind of reality kind of thing to kind of like show you. Can you, like, you know, hear it, kids?

And I got a big laugh out of Kathleen Parker, at the very end saying, "The thing people can't stand is the lies." I then rewatched the clip and lingered over the part where they showed Bill Clinton saying he "experimented" with marijuana and "didn't like it" and "didn't inhale." I found that very refreshing.

That's the kind of honesty I like right now. It was a lie, and you knew it was a lie when he told it. There was none of this feeling of oh, wow, look at the reality, man. What felt real was: There's a politician that will smile and lie straight to our faces. He's a liar.

Those were the days.

What Eric Holder said about drugs.

I held up on blogging the advance publicity on the speech because I wanted to see the text, which is now available here.

Presidential Green Crack.

In the comments to "The cynicism question: What do you want — ἁτυφια or τύφος? Lucidity or smoke? Clarity or choom?," Meade directs us to Presidential Green Crack:

Strain Name: Presidential Green Crack
Grade: A+
Type: Sativa
Looks: shades of green and gold
Smell: smells really good, like clean green bud
Taste: almost tasteless, no skunk taste
Effects: creativity, precision to detail
Potency: I give this 4 out of 4 buds
Reviewed by: sharyna
Good Strain For: tedious work

That's not political satire — I don't think. That's an actual review of a strain of "medical" marijuana.

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade said:

Strain Name: Presidential Green Crack
Grades: From college and law school? N/A
Type: Redistributionist
Looks: clean
Smell: clean AND articulate
Taste: almost tasteless, but definitely a skunk
Effects: creative spinning of details
Potency: I give this 4 out of 4 Pinocchios
Reviewed by: internal administration investigation
Good Strain For: relieving stress of 3AM phone calls

"David Axelrod now works for MSNBC, which is a nice change of pace, since MSNBC used to work for David Axelrod.

Said Obama last night, making funny at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. His comic routine lasts over 20 minutes. I just pulled that one line out because it actually almost corresponded to the truth about correspondents.



ADDED: Meade and I both said "wow" when he said "I remember when Buzzfeed was just something I did in college around 2 a.m."

AND: That's a long slog. Here's the 2 minute compression done by WaPo.



I wish they'd cut out part of the lengthy laughing at every effort Obama makes at humor. It's so dull watching the complacent folks in formalwear lolling about chuckling at the boss's jokes. Conan O'Brien seemed pretty awkward. He rolled out the old analogy that adult life is like high school. Fox is the jocks, etc. He included bloggers — the goths. (That was a meme around here 3 years ago.)

MORE: I really do find the shots of the audience quite sickening. Do they not realize how they look? It's an anti-advertisement for the services they'd like to sell us. They seem utterly unprepared to confront power. I'm thinking: This is something that should be done in private, like masturbation. Then I realize: This is the public show. Imagine what they do in private.

"Across the country, the business of growing pot is fast becoming mainstream."

Says the Wall Street Journal:

But it turns out that trying to make a profit in this business is harder than expected. When grown and sold legally, marijuana can be an expensive proposition, with high startup costs, a host of operational headaches and state regulations that a beet farmer could never imagine. In Colorado, for example, managers must submit to background checks that include revealing tattoos. The state also requires cameras in every room that has plants; Mr. Klug relies on 48 of them....

When grown and sold legally?! Why is the Wall Street Journal writing that? You can't grow and sell marijuana legally. This is all a crime under federal law.

Prices for pot, meanwhile, have plummeted, in large part because of growing competition. And bank financing is out of the question: Federal law doesn't allow these businesses, and agents sometimes raid growers even in states where it is legal.

Doesn't allow? You mean: Makes it a felony. Growing marijuana is a criminal enterprise. And there are no "states where it is legal." It is illegal in all of the states under federal law. The states are in the United States — haven't you heard?!

... Pink House Blooms is a $3 million-a-year business, with 2,000 plants in a converted warehouse in an industrial part of Denver... To get started on this scale, [Elliott] Klug says he sank more than $3 million — some of it borrowed from family — into the operation. He says Pink House Blooms is profitable, with demand up 30% some months....

His advice for anyone who wants to become rich by legally dealing pot: "Start with lots of money."

Shouldn't that be: Start by not worrying about what "legally" means? This man is attracting attention, getting his name and these big numbers in print in the WSJ, which presumably loves to profile the risk-takers of business.

Last December, President Barack Obama said his administration had "bigger fish to fry" than going after recreational users. 

Nice for the recreational users to know they aren't big enough, but what solace is that for the man trying to become rich by dealing pot? He is trying to be the big fish. He's trying to get rich in a market that anyone who refuses to commit crimes cannot enter. What a terrible situation! And yet the prices are already plummeting, we're told, because of all the competition. Klug's hope of getting rich is premised on the illegality.

"So far, few traditional farmers lining up to grow marijuana in Washington state, Colorado."

WaPo reports:

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law....

The Justice Department has not said whether it will try to block the two states from implementing their new laws, passed late last year.....

In addition, marijuana is a crop that can’t be insured, and federal drug law bars banks from knowingly serving the industry....

Both states are in the process of developing rules for a legal marijuana industry....

How can state rules possibly make the industry legal? They can only make chaos that might conceivably move Congress to change the federal law. I don't see that coming any time soon. The Justice Department might say something encouraging, but will the next President's Justice Department stick with whatever position Eric Holder embraces?

Even if you felt sure you wouldn't be prosecuted, would you want to sign up on an official list as someone who is conspicuously committing an ongoing felony? Would you switch from a legal crop and expose yourself like that? And even if some farmers would go ahead and violate the criminal law — presumably because the upside profits are high — does the inability to buy crop insurance and use banks wreck the whole idea?

Dozens of marijuana experts, who have been growing plants for medical use or in secret for illegal use, are educating state officials about the potential for the crop. Probably 95 percent of those people choose to grow their plants indoors, despite higher costs, to control light and temperature, improve quality and increase yields....

Indoor crops generally allow for up to three harvests per season, compared to just one harvest for an outdoor crop, and allow for easier security measures. 

So "traditional farmers" have an entirely separate reason for not responding to the new program. You can't be growing marijuana amber-waves-of-grain-on-the-fruited-plain style. This stuff will be grown in big warehouses, pulling in loads of electricity for intense lighting and heavily guarded with guns! guns! guns!

Oh, but here's a little old lady, "Gail Besemer, who grows flowers and vegetables near Deming, Wash., [who] has expressed interest in a producers’ license."

Besemer already has three hoop houses, which are essentially temporary greenhouses, but could see expanding her business slightly to grow marijuana for a local clientele in northwest Washington.

Slightly! Flowers! Grandma!

However, “I’m concerned about druggies invading my property — ne’er-do-wells invading my property to steal, to get free dope,” she said. “Security would be an issue.”

Where do you get off with that contempt for the consumers of the product you want to grow? Seems to me, these are your people. Don't insult them.

“My family is not particularly excited about me being interested in this. But if someone has an integrated farm, growing a number of different crops, I would think it would be a high profit plant,” she said. “Taxation and security might get in the way of profits, and it might end not being so profitable.”

Yeah, you'd better think about it, lady. There's a reason it's a high profit plant. If it weren't for all these problems, any idiot could grow his own in his house. Take away the obstacles, and it's not a business at all. Which removes half of the attraction for the government, since there won't be anything to tax if there isn't a big rules-heavy structure burdening business. This isn't a game for the little old lady with her flowers and hoop houses. But that's the screwy, sentimental anecdote The Washington Post ties to plant in our brain.

Aggressive prosecution #1: California businessman commercially growing medical marijuana.

Adam Nagourney, in the NYT, gives very sympathetic treatment to Matthew R. Davies — "a round-faced 34-year-old father of two young girls" with "graduate-level business skills" who "paid California sales tax and filed for state and local business permits" and got the advice of many lawyers as he set up an enterprise that plainly and overtly is a felony under federal law. Davies told the NYT:

“We thought, this is an industry in its infancy, it’s a heavy cash business, it’s basically being used by people who use it to cloak illegal activity. Nobody was doing it the right way. We thought we could make a model of how this should be done.”

Cloak illegal activity? It is illegal activity. Federal law is real. Haven't you heard?!

The right way? Cloaking is the right way when you're committing crimes. With your business education, somehow you were all: Hey, what a smart idea I have — being completely out in the open about breaking the law. Why hasn't anybody else thought of this?

And I love the way the NYT suddenly has a pro-business orientation. Davies deserves special grace under the law because he's using the structure of business and because he's excited about making big profits! Compare that to all the articles anguishing over Citizens United and how terrible it is to respect free speech rights when the speech comes from a place that is structured as a business.

“Mr. Davies was not a seriously ill user of marijuana nor was he a medical caregiver — he was the major player in a very significant commercial operation that sought to make large profits from the cultivation and sale of marijuana,” [said a letter from United States attorney for the Eastern District of California, Benjamin B. Wagner, a 2009 Obama appointee.] Mr. Wagner said that prosecuting such people “remains a core priority of the department.”...

“It’s mind-boggling that there were hundreds of attorneys advising their clients that it was O.K. to do this, only to be bushwhacked by a federal system that most people in California are not even paying attention to,” said William J. Portanova, a former federal drug prosecutor and a lawyer for one of Mr. Davies’s co-defendants. “It’s tragic.”

Yes, and it is mind-boggling that those who argue for the broad interpretation of federal power and who scoff at the idea of the 10th Amendment and reserving powers to the state somehow can't grasp the meaning of their general propositions when they encounter an issue where they prefer the state policy to the federal policy. The NYT and other drivers of elite opinion ought to have to face up to the reality of what their legal propositions entail.

And quite aside from the problem of the allocation of power at the federal and the state levels, how about some consistency about equal justice under the law? Let the law — as written — apply the same way to everyone, whether they have a round face and 2 young daughters or not, whether they've gone to grad school or not, whether they have big visions of massive profits or they are living hand to mouth. If the law is wrong, change the law — for everybody. Don't cry over the people you think are nice — like David Gregory and Aaron Swartz. Nonphotogenic and low-class people deserve equal treatment, and cutting breaks for the ones who pull your heart strings is not justice.

Obama's useless response to the Colorado/Washington marijuana issue.

"We've got bigger fish to fry... It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it's legal."

This is no help at all. It states the obvious, and it says what's true about federal policy toward all the states. The feds are not prosecuting the small-time user. The question in Colorado and Washington state is about how the state is supposed to manage the situation, given the conflict with federal law. They've asked for a federal response, and this gives them absolutely no new information.

He does say a  bit more...

"This is a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law.... I head up the executive branch; we're supposed to be carrying out laws. And so what we're going to need to have is a conversation about, How do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it's legal?"

... but that's restating the question, not answering it.

What we're going to need to have is a conversation about... that's so annoying. Give an answer!

"The Drug War is about control."

"Obama likes control."

And here's the NYT reporting on the way the Obama administration is supposedly mulling over what to do about Colorado and Washington.

Some law enforcement officials, alarmed at the prospect that marijuana users in both states could get used to flouting federal law openly, are said to be pushing for a stern response. But such a response would raise political complications for President Obama because marijuana legalization is popular among liberal Democrats who just turned out to re-elect him.

It's all about Obama!

(Why didn't I have a tag "Obama and drugs" before? All that "choom" stuff and so on....)

ADDED: Meade riffs on Obama and hope and segues into "pocketful of hope... money for dope... money for rope..." and I find the old John Lennon song in my iTunes:

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of Tricky Dicky
Is gonna Mother Hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope 

That makes me think about and "10 For 2: John Sinclair Freedom Rally" which took place in Ann Arbor in 1971 — where I was in town, listening to the live feed on the radio — and John Lennon himself showed up and that "inspired the creation of Ann Arbor’s annual pro-legalization Hash Bash rally, which continues to be held as of 2012."

40 years ago. Obama was 10. It was the year Obama returned from Indonesia to Honolulu to live with his grandparents and go to prep school. As David Maraniss tells it:

A self-selected group of boys at Punahou School who loved basketball and good times called themselves the Choom Gang. 180 Choom is a verb, meaning “to smoke marijuana.” As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends. The first was called “TA,” short for “total absorption.” To place this in the physical and political context of another young man who would grow up to be president, TA was the antithesis of Bill Clinton’s claim that as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled. When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious pakalolo (Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning “numbing tobacco”) instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around. “Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated,” explained one member of the Choom Gang, Tom Topolinski, the Chinese-looking kid with a Polish name who answered to Topo.

Obama likes control!

"Why did America change its mind about legal marijuana?"

Asks the Christian Science Monitor, reacting to the Quinnipiac Poll — which we were talking about yesterday. Our discussion focused on the gender difference, which the CSM doesn't mention. It just says 51% of Americans support legalization, when in fact, as I highlighted "Men support legalization by a much wider margin, 59-36%, and women oppose it, 52-44%." You can get some different insights into why "America change[d] its mind" if you know the gender profile of that "mind."

But the CSM, gender-blind, speculates thusly:

The dramatic change in public opinion, experts say, has been driven by pop culture and generational shifts, and also a simple reality. While pot is illegal, it is common at parties and concerts....

"With the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes legal in about 20 states, and Washington and Colorado voting this November to legalize the drug for recreational use, American voters seem to have a more favorable opinion about this once-dreaded drug," Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, told CBS News. "There are large differences on this question among the American people."

Though boosted by successes in Colorado and Washington, pro-marijuana advocates say their toughest challenge is convincing Congress and President Obama to declassify pot as a Schedule 1 drug – or at least to ensure that Congress doesn't interfere with state experimentation on marijuana taxation. After all, Mr. Obama allowed his Justice Department to begin a crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries despite a campaign promise to not do so....

There's one more step needed in this analysis, and it's why I changed my mind. There's too much legal disorder, and it can only be decently cured by changing the federal law. Years ago, the states all agreed with the federal government's ban and helped out with the enforcement. But the states had the power to go their own way, and now that some have, there's a huge enforcement gap, which makes at least some people in those states feel that marijuana is legal. This is confusing to the point of unfairness.

I don't like the federal government lurking in the background and sending mixed signals about whether it will or will not enforce. Those who aren't too risk averse or who are not big rule-followers get to use a product that more timorous or punctilious individuals feel they're not allowed to use. And the medical marijuana approach makes it even worse, creating absurd temptations to lie and dissemble and even fantasize about ailments and the curative effect of the drug.

It's a mess that can only cleaned up by legalizing the drug at the federal level and letting the states take over the lawmaking and law enforcement.

"This is Obama chortling with Jimmy Fallon about lower-class people."

"Do we believe, even for a second... that if Obama had been busted for marijuana, under the laws that he condones, would his life have been better? If Obama had been caught with the marijuana that he says he uses, and maybe a little blow — blow, cocaine, blow — this casual attitude toward drugs — a casual attitude toward drugs — that makes him really cool on Jimmy Fallon, makes him the hip President. I'm the cool President! I'm the happenin'est President! I say "weed." I say "blow." It's all a big deal. Ha ha ha. Huge laugh from the college students. And if he had been busted, under his laws, he would have done hard, fucking time, and if he had done time in prison, time in federal prison, time for his weed and a little blow, he would not be President of the United States of America, and he would not have gone to his fancy-ass college, he would not have sold books that sold millions and millions of copies and made millions and millions of dollars, he would not have a beautiful, smart wife, he would not have a great job. He would have been in prison. And it's not a goddamn joke."



Says Penn Jillette, who has never used any drugs (or had any alcohol) and doesn't generally have a problem with hypocrisy.

ADDED: The last sentence of this post isn't sarcasm. Penn states at the beginning of the video that he  doesn't generally have a problem with hypocrisy. He's not a stickler about mere hypocrisy. It's this particular hypocrisy by Obama that bothers him deeply. He states at the end of the video that he himself has never used any substances, which is useful to know: He's not speaking from a position of self-interest.

The Obama administration's incoherence about medical marijuana.

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog says:

In recent weeks, landlords of some pot shops [in California] have received letters from federal prosecutors warning them to stop sales within 45 days or risk seizure of their property and criminal charges....

The current crackdown... is spawning some backlash accusing President Obama of a reversal based on campaign statements, and those later by Justice Department officials, that the federal government shouldn’t and wouldn’t go after medical pot usage allowed by state laws....

Administration officials have countered, such as in this memo in June from Deputy Attorney General James Cole, that the recent aggressive enforcement isn’t a flip-flop — simply a reaction to a vast recent expansion of marijuana cultivation and distribution facilities....

If you tell businesses they can do something, and they rely on it and expand, how can you justify changing the policy because they expanded?

We were just talking about the way uncertainty about government policy inhibits the expansion of business. Now, here's a case where the government proffered assurance about something, triggered a big expansion, and now it's changing the policy.

Why didn't the Obama administration foresee that non-prosecution would lead to expansion? Or maybe I should ask why the purveyors of marijuana trusted the government not to flip the policy? Were they high?

Hey! Wait a minute. Here's some lateral thinking on the subject: All those other businesses owners who are inhibited in the face of policy uncertainty. Let them smoke marijuana. It might overcome their inhibition.

Obama legalizes marijuana.

As long as you live in Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont or Washington and have a sympathetic doctor and — what? — a headache?

Meanwhile, if you don't live in one of those places and/or you don't want to dissemble about why you want to use marijuana, you'll have to wait longer for the pleasures you assumed would have to be legalized as soon as the people who were young in the 1960s got old enough to fully infiltrate the government.

***

Background, from "Dreams From My Father":

I had learned not to care. I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though....

Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man. Except the highs hadn't been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by then, anyway. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory. I had discovered that it didn't make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmate's sparkling new van, or in the dorm room of some brother you'd met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl. ... You might just be bored, or alone. Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection.

So let's be clear. You can have marijuana for your medical conditions. (It's kind of the "blue pill," isn't it?) But you can't be using it to flatten out the landscape of your heart or to blur the edges of your memory.

"I inhaled. Frequently. That was the point."

Here's a folky political protest song (via Nick Gillespie, who's not amused by Obama's flippant response to the marijuana question the other day):

Marijuana "ranked fairly high," says Obama, who was presumably not high...

... when he said: "I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation. And I don't know what this says about the online audience..."

And you must be high if you think Obama will legalize marijuana.

***

Famous old quote: "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though."