sorry, too stoned to write

that got your attention, didn’t it?

if i lived in portugal, i might actually be too stoned to write.

or not -- since decriminalizing ALL drug use eight years ago, fewer people in that country use drugs today than did back when using was illegal. and the dreaded influx of slavering junkies searching for a safe place to shoot up never materialized. check out this short docuclip from the BBC:

amazing? no, predictable. but this is america, and we don’t need evidence if we can have a war instead, even one so unwinnable, expensive and disastrous as the infamous “war on drugs” has turned out to be.

in fact, we are so determined to keep drugs away from people at all costs that our egregious policies have created a set of international laws around painkiller prescriptions so monstrous that few underdeveloped countries can comply with them. the result? people with cancer and HIV die screaming, with nary a tab of oxycontin nor shot of morphine to give them so much as an hour of relief. can’t be too careful with those opiates, you know. what if these people became addicted?

can’t you just picture it: armies of deathbed junkies slavering through the hospital corridors, tumors in hand, searching for that next one.

as terry j. allen so eloquently put it:

Few actions so perfectly combine stupidity and cruelty as denying pain relief to the dying because narcotics can be addictive.

meanwhile, alcohol is not only legal, not only tolerated, but absolutely celebrated by the american political elite, who can hardly hold a fundraiser without a few magnums of Cristal. despite the whimpering lush beneath the park bench two blocks away from the white house, the one who couldn’t find anything to drink that night and so is hiding from his DDT horrors like somebody out of an updated scene from the days of wine and roses.

oh stop it, jackie, you left-wing hippie liberal drugloving so-and-so. if our fearless leaders are, even today, even in the year of our lord 2009, introducing legislation that would send pot dealers to jail for the next quarter century (at our expense, of course), then you’ve got it all wrong.

uh, unless they live on rhode island, where legal pot distribution centers are set to open shortly.

i must be confused. are you?