Three Bong Family:
Tommy Chong's jail sentence for selling drug paraphernalia brought to mind how for years this stuff has been sold in ordinary businesses (record stores, "head shops," etc.). The "ruse" or legal loophole is that apparently you are supposed to smoke tobacco out of these things.
This was further brought to mind when the Spencer's chain at my mall (the Oxford Valley Mall) recently got into legal trouble for selling bongs.
And I thought to myself...didn't The Facts of Life cover this in an episode twenty some years ago. Then I checked YouTube which had this gem. Not only can you use bongs for tobacco, but they also serve another useful function: they hold jellybeans.
2 comments:
Fortunately, after a period of proscription, "head shops" have reemerged, but only because "medical marijuana" is "legal" in California (regardless of what the feds say).
The City and State will not intervene against the purveryors of cannibis and its shops, and I have no idea how many Rx are genuine (a concern to some).
Since "pot" is no personal interest, I can enjoy all the inconguities and discords as an observer. Weed has been ubiquitous since my days in high school, and I've never observed any harm from others' use of it. Several patients praise grass as the "only" thing that works, and none would qualify as a "druggie."
Numerous States followed California's lead and permit "medical marijuana," but Ashcroft would have none of plebecite democracy. He sent Justice "troops" to confiscate and imprison the peddlers of "this horrible scourge." Now local and State officials (e.g., "police") act as human barriers to federal raids, and Ashcroft's departure seems to have led to less interest in the matter by Justice.
How idividual freedom, State's rights, and the Moral Police pursuing an expensively worthless "drug war" ought to work only devolves in Theater of the Absurd. The "Raich" decision by SCOTUS last Spring only perpetuates the absurdity. Enough Justices "deemed" private cultivation and consumption of cannibis fit the commerce clause (how? I have no clue), and the Feds perogative over States' rights was upheld.
So the next time Scalia et al. insist they're not legislating from the bench, only interpreting, we may again expose their fraud. Unlike the Warren Court, fortunately, they aren't legislating remedial action, so that may actually be "progress." Still, the discordance is unsettling, and it still appears that the Constitution says only what 5 of 9 Justices decide it says. And again, the IX and X Amendments to the Bill of Rights is sidelined to obscurity. The national schizophrenia continues apace.
Any society that allows the sale of alcohol and tabacco has to allow the sale of pot which is not nearly as lethal as the other two -- in fact there is no lethality whatsoever associated with pot.
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