I've been smoking and growing pot for over 40 years. I still do. It's quasi legal now where I live. In fact, more people smoke pot than smoke tobacco around here. I'm with the poster who proposed simply letting people grow it, and leaving it at that. I, for one, am not going to change my ways to pay some agri business to grow my pot, nor am I going to pay a $50 tax to the government to smoke it. I MIGHT buy a grower's permit, if it was affordable... but probably not. There are, contrary to the article, many thousands of hippie guys and gals that have been growing pot in this country for years. These "cartels" are mainly anomalies, the exception. As much money as there appears to be in pot, there's vastly more to be made in the white powder drugs and smack, and it's much easier to conceal and transport at much higher profit, pound for pound. At least on the west coast, almost all of our pot is domestically grown, with a certain proportion coming from that poor, third world country to our north.

I wish the guy luck... but the REAL money being made from pot these days in on the law enforcement/prison industrial complex side. I don't think these folks have any intention of giving up the cash cow that marijuana prohibition has become for them, what with civil forfeitures and a steady stream of "clients" to "process" and run through the completely phony "rehab" industry.

The status quo, while certainly insane, does provide a nice source of income to the boho community. It keeps countless musicians, artists, and other fringies going enough to provide yuppies with "cool, artistic" places to go spend their trust funds.

So... I'm split on what I, personally, would like to see. I'll smoke on it, eh?

Gore won the popular vote by half a million. He probably won Florida, as well. The only "close" vote that (spit) Bush the small won was the 5-4 treason of the majority of the Supreme Court. Were any of those votes "illegal"? I'd submit that every vote out of the treasonous cabal of Scalia and his lap dog Thomas is illegal.

You're apparently using Anslinger's "evidence".

And as for "driving under the influence"? Get the cell phone drivers to hang up and get back to me. The worst thing you're going to see from stoned drivers is a bad case of "pot foot" - going 35 in a 55 zone.

Or a "man" who outright lied to "lead" this country into a phony, ginned up war of choice, eschewed any planning for said war, and spent 3 trillion of our dollars - OFF BUDGET - and over 4000 of the lives of some of bravest citizens "fighting" HIS war?

Great work, Joan... best ever.

That positioning the Rs as the "party of Limbaugh" was their strategy from the beginning of this current round, which, I believe was fully implemented when Obama singled him out by name a few weeks ago. I thought it brilliant then, and it appears to all that and more. Good work. It's only right - a classic case of hoisting on their own petard.

One more observation about Rush, and something I've never seen mentioned but always been slightly amused by: It's his chosen long time theme music. For those of you too young or too old to not know, it's the beginning of the Pretenders song "My city was gone", an fairly aggressive anti development song Crissy Hynde penned about the paving over and mallization of her former home town - Cincinnati, I believe.

A sampling of the lyrics:

I went back to ohio

But my pretty countryside

Had been paved down the middle

By a government that had no pride

The farms of ohio

Had been replaced by shopping mall

Pretty funny choice for "conservative" Rush, eh?

Thanks, both of you folks who have steered me towards the actual city that "My City is Gone" refers to. I really never knew, and, obviously, I should have been able to pick it up from the lyrics. So... thanks again.

I've actually learned a little about Ohio in the process. Being a native Oregonian, and having lived within 50 miles of the coast my entire life, only rarely making it out of the PNW, I will admit to a certain amount of regional jingoism. I'm trying to tamp that down and your corrections have increased my knowledge about the "terra incognita" beyond my damp forest. Thank you.

Etat Unuarians? United Statesians? Otheronians?

I heard Angela Davis speak a few weeks ago and she had a nice little rant about how people in the United States have usurped the identity of the entire hemisphere as their own unique identity. Obviously, the title "American" actually belongs to everyone on this side of the globe.

You forgot to include Bobby Jindal on your list.... or are you still propping up your assertion that he's a native american?

heh heh

And you'll lose any appetite you may have.

would just increase the numbers. That's what every other "war on ...." has done since this insidious phrase entered the political lexicon.