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Crazy Bread
You know Smokey has emotional problems… He's fragile, man! Very fragile!
11-9
- For the last few months I've been working for a web design company that builds sites for small businesses looking to gain exposure and attract customers. During that time, I've come across companies of all shapes and varieties, ranging from the bizarre to the idiotic. I've created web presences for gas stations owners who requested that I refrain from publishing their street address. I once built a web site for a medical transcriptionist in Pennsylvania who asked that somewhere on her page I include the line "we are not accepting new clients at this time."
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- The key to this gig (as it is with most gigs, it seems) is to do your best not to think about it. Just sorta take it as it comes, push the right buttons, send it on its way, and try not to get worked up over things that don't matter. In other words, I'm getting paid to throw litter on the information superhighway, so I'm not in the best position to bitch if the place starts to look messy.
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- Then something like this happens...
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- I just finished building a site for a head shop in Los Angles that's actually called
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- "Buzz R Us"
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- I don't know - maybe it's because it's just never been my sort of thing, but this whole industry has always sorta baffled me.
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- Selling bongs is perfectly legal.
Buying a bong is perfectly legal.
Having a bong is perfectly legal.
Using a bong...
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- Think about this for a second. The law allows merchants to manufacture, stock, advertise, and sell products that no one is allowed to use. I mean, can you actually smoke tobacco in a water pipe? And even if you can, has anyone ever?
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- Can you imagine the smoker in your life; be it a parent, spouse, or whoever -- sitting with the family after thanksgiving dinner with a 3-foot neon green bubbler shaped like an alien saying, "I don't know what it is about turkey, but it always gives me that craving - Hey grampus, you wanna hit some of this?"
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- Next time you're driving around and you see a place called "Fast Eddies," "Exotica," or "Ellusions," stop in and tell them you want to buy a cigar for your friend because his wife just had a baby.
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- They're gonna send you someplace else... understand?
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- I don't smoke pot. I never have. It's just not something that I ever found myself interested in doing. But I've got no problem with people who do. You want to blaze up right now, go ahead - knock yourself out, have a good time. The high are an endless source of easy entertainment, and as far as I'm concerned aren't really able to hurt anyone but themselves.
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- In fact, my main problem with potheads isn't so much the things they do when they're stoned, but the habits they seem to fall into when they're not. Getting wasted doesn't bother me. But make me listen to Phish for any extended period of time and you're probably taking your life into your own hands...
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- It just doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever that these stores are allowed to exist.
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- Imagine for a second that we go into one of these places. We walk around, check out the selection, see something we like, and take it up to the counter. The friendly person at the register rings it up and asks you if there will be anything else.
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- "This thing I just bought" you ask, "what's it for?"
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- Maybe I'm not fully versed in the rules and regulations on how all of this works, but doesn't it seem like the only response the employee can give would be:
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- "I can't tell you that."
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- Even as I was building the website, the information I was given to work with continually referred to hand blown-Pyrex, carburetors, and digital scales as things you would use for all of your "personal smoking" needs.
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- I mean, who are we trying to fool? What's the bloody point?
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- The law says people 18 and up can buy this stuff without any fear of persecution. If I'm a cop, don't I just sit outside the store, wait for someone to come out, and follow them home? I know that's probably considered entrapment or something, but honestly - what do you think Stoney's gonna do when he makes it back to the house?
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- If the government is at WAR with drugs, then what the fuck?
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- I mean think about it, allowing the sales of bongs when pot smoking is illegal would be like... oh I don't know, giving weapons to hostile Middle Eastern natons?
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- "Ok, Osama - here's a gun. But I swear, if I catch you shooting one bullet out of this..."
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- Marijuana needs to be legalized.
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- Not because it's a harmless drug (because it's certainly not), and not because it's a victimless crime, but because it's a retarded set of laws. The drug possession statutes in this country only serve to make the police look stupid. And locking up potheads doesn't do anyone any good.
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- Think about this for a second. You get a DUI; you lose your license. You get caught with pot, you get... what?
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- If we have stores that sell liquor and guns, establishments that are subject to intense regulatory control; businesses selling products that carry severe legal penalties for their misuse - then doesn't it just make sense to find a way to add soft narcotics to the list?
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- And don't come to me with stories of hashish bars in Denmark, or needle distributions in London. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying establishments that sell marijuana should be as homogenized as liquor stores or gun shops. Hey, If it's just about having a good time, then let the heads shop alongside the housewives looking for that special ingredient to use in their next brownie recipe. And while we're at it, a 7-day waiting period to allow for a criminal background check doesn't sound like that bad of an idea, either...
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- Maybe I'm oversimplifying things here, who knows. But in my mind, the police and the courts get a lot more mileage out of prosecuting people who break much clearer laws regarding alcohol and weaponry.
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- You want to take a dent out of organized crime and international racketeering? Let Anheuser-Busch or Phillip Morris take control of the supply chain. Pablo Escobar might thumb his nose at the DEA, but I can guarantee you that he's never been up against anything remotely as frightening as Big Tobacco before.
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- Know where it comes from. Know who the customers are. Lock them away if they're ever caught driving, and tax the fuck out of it.
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- We do this every day.
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- And yeah - people's lives will crash down around them. And yeah, innocents will probably die because of the repercussions.
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- But at least we won't be lying just
to make ourselves feel better anymore.
- Buzz R Us...
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What did you think
they were selling in there?
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