It's Not What You Think

Back in my days working for St. Louis University, I got to roam the campus as part of my job. I've been to the Dean's office, cleaned up porn spam for Jesuits, and accidentally walked into an autopsy lab. You just see shit. A lot of it is accidental.

Following freshman-week, the quad was packed with young coeds heading to the pool. My work partner and I overheard a heated conversation between two students, in which one of them was obviously accused of cheating. We chuckled knowingly about it. I mean, who among us hasn't been on the wrong end of anything from a lingering glance to a greater indiscretion?

My partner, Justin, related a story in which he had gone to a party and managed to hook up with a girl that he didn't otherwise know. Most stories end right there, but it turns out she had a boyfriend who came looking for Justin after finding out. There was bluster and demands for blood, to which Justin simply shrugged and said, "I'm not the one who cheated on you..."

The boyfriend, silenced by the retort, could only leave in embarrassment. Justin was one hundred percent correct. Whatever quarrel the boyfriend had, it was with his girl. She wasn't magically seduced, left senseless and unable to resist. She just made a bad call. Going after the person she made the bad call with was a misdirection of anger, and Justin rightly called it out.

Having seen the recent Facebook comment that "I don't mess with girls who are taken", I got to thinking about this issue again. Cheating is not what you think it is. Cheating is what your significant other thinks it is.

Everyone has a different definition of cheating. They also have a line they don't cross, and a line they expect others not to cross. Generally those are one in the same. But since you are not the one ultimately hurt by your cheating, it falls to the definition owned by the person who is hurt. Your boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse...

That also brings into question the concept of fidelity and its foundation. The Facebook comment I mentioned incorporates the word "taken". I find that significant because it implies ownership. Perhaps not in the legal sense, but we all know what it means. Someone, somewhere, is expecting exclusivity with the person that the Facebook poster mentioned above wont mess with.

Let's get one thing clear right now. If a person is in a relationship, an implicitly or explicitly exclusive relationship, and are still willing to cheat, then they aren't "taken". The person on the other end of that relationship may not know this. It could even be a soul-crushing surprise. In any case, at least one person in the relationship has the wrong idea, possibly even involving deceit.

Where does that leave someone like Justin? Firstly, he had no duty to the boyfriend. He's owed nothing. He gets nothing. Justin only had one question to answer, and that was "do I want to do the sex with this girl?" Clearly he did. He has no vested interest in the other questions that may exist. Secondly, the girl he slept with bears the responsibility of acting outside of the understanding her boyfriend had about their relationship. Thirdly, the boyfriend went after the obvious, however incorrect, person to exact his pound of flesh.

It's a learned behavior to go after the person your guy or girl fooled around with. Why exactly that is, I don't know. We've come to the mistaken impression that consensual sex is the fault of the third party. Except in extreme and criminal acts, that's just not the case. People fuck up all the time. They act selfishly, either by jumping in the sack or not being honest that they are prepared to jump in the sack. In either case, the fault is with the person who keeps someone else in the dark.

Justin didn't lie to anyone. He didn't coerce, manipulate, or bribe this girl into sex. To be mad at him is kinda like being mad at the person in front of you in line for buying the last Big Mac. So if you fuck around on your boo (and about half of you will), remember that there is no responsibility that you can push off onto anyone else. It's your decision; your decision to test their definition.

If you think it's anything other than that, you're mistaken.

Chronic[les]: Gateway-Phobia

Author Texas Bix Bender has published a number of books filled with cowboy wisdom. He's said things like, "don't squat with your spurs on", or "there's more ways to skin a can than sticking its head in a boot jack and jerking its tail." One of my favorite little bits of brilliance has stuck with me since I first picked up one of his books over twenty years ago. "Don't be mad a someone who knows more than you. It ain't their fault."

Not to put too fine a point on it, the Trump administration has been mad at a lot of people lately...

Rather recently, Sean Spicer spoke on the issue of marijuana and enforcement of Federal laws in a somewhat sidelong manner. "I think that when you see something like the opioid addiction crisis blossoming in so many states around this country, the last thing we should be doing is encouraging people," Spicer said. "There is still a federal law that we need to abide by."

He's right on the count of the opioid crisis. He's also right about there being Federal laws in place, though he stops short of saying that there will be more Federal resources used to enforce them in states that have legalized it for recreational use. Why he hits the brakes before making a sweeping statement like that, I don't know. Hasn't stopped anyone else in Washington lately.

Dr. Andrew Kolodny, co-director of Opioid Policy Research at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management, has said "We know why there's an opioid addiction epidemic. ... I don't think there is really debate. It's because we have overexposed the population to prescription opioids. The driver behind that increase in opioid addiction has been an overprescribing of pain medicine, overexposing the population to a highly addictive drug."

The assertion that marijuana is a gateway drug is a relic from the days of D.A.R.E. We were told that we'd be surrounded by people pushing drugs at us. The practical manifestation of that claim resides in those who ended up in a doctor's office with some variety of persistent pain. A flowery way of saying that your local smack pusher was most likely your doctor.

In fact, no causative relationship can be found between marijuana use and subsequent opiate abuse. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study that correlates state passage of medical marijana laws with a 24.8% reduction in opioid related overdose deaths between 1999 and 2010. Considering an average of 33,000 opioid overdose deaths in the United States each year, that is not an insignificant number. It's roughly the number of firearm related deaths, and suggesting a therapy that would reduce that number by 24.8% would certainly garner legislative support. That is a quantum leap in mortality prevention, no matter what your stance is.

The JAMA study also points out that 60% of all opioid overdoses, whether intentional (suicide) or not, occur among patients legitimately prescribed opioid pain management therapies. It is a naked fact that overdoses among purely illicit drug users are in the minority. To Dr. Kolodny's point above, this is a crisis resulting from unchecked medical professionals.

Biological causality is really a better indicator of potential opioid abuse. People who have demonstrated use and abuse of things like alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana are likelier to become addicted to opiates. However, no causal link to marijuana can be established.

In previous articles, I have pointed out the complete vacuum of empirical evidence that ties marijuana to heroin. It is mildly addictive, at best, and functionally impossible to overdose. Some mental impairments have been associated with use in people who used at a young age. However, significant pathologies of any other type are completely absent, save for bronchial irritation (smokers cough).

Evidence doesn't just not support the idea of weed as a gateway drug, but it debunks it with every study published. Science, as Neal DeGrasse Tyson stated in a segment of Cosmos, follows evidence "wherever it leads." Right now, it's not leading to any gateways. So maybe we should quit repeating that disproved rhetoric...

Maybe we should focus on education for a bit instead of indoctrination. We'll have fewer people to be mad at because they know more than us.

Where Credit is Due: Part 1

Forgive me, please. I must be raw for a moment. I must extend some very intense emotions to those who were on the outside looking in.

As you know, I am now divorced. While that can never be expected to be an easy transition, I am happier, healthier, and more positive. As my friends, I have shared good times with you. Whether to my detriment or credit, I have deliberately not shared this time with you. Not for a lack of trust in your support, mind you, but for an abundance of respect; from which came my resolve to not expose you to my baser inclinations.

In a divorce, there is always the temptation to strike out at your former spouse. I have found this to be repugnant, and my only safeguard is in keeping the more disgusting details to myself. I could not stoop to the level I feared if I did not first have the audience I needed. However you interpret my withdrawal and silence, know that it was to protect our friendship and my integrity.

As the divorce draws to a close, I must thank those who did not repeat the awful things said about me. I know that such things were said because they've been conveyed to me in the most hateful and vitriolic way I can imagine... repeated as gospel by people I once considered my closest friends.

To those who did repeat these awful things, and to whatever extent they were broadcast... fuck you.

My attempts to remain above board with my former spouse have been ignored, glossed over, or downright buried in a dung heap of biased contempt. To even call my behavior "above board" is something of a misnomer since I did not return the treatment I received in-kind. However, I was painted as everything from a cheater to an abuser. I can't even begin to illustrate how untrue that is. But the pure malice that came from the people who believed these things about me was astonishing and pervasive. To this day, I maintain blocks so that certain individuals cannot contact me directly. The same people I dearly loved before all of this began.

In late August of 2016, we had the opportunity to refinance our marital house. Even though divorce had become a certainty, refinancing would still have saved my ex some money on the monthly note, and I was still intent on making her life without me as easy as possible. While she had become impatient about transferring assets out of my name, she also became insistent that we attend the refinance closing separately. The reason why did not become apparent until the day of closing. The title company had requested that we do the paperwork in one sitting so as not to unnecessarily occupy their agent. I arrived at the appointed time and noticed that her vehicle wasn't there. There was one which was a model year newer, but I dismissed it until I saw the license plate...

She had traded in our marital vehicle without my authorization, or the court's, in direct violation of preliminary injunctions. Now I understood why she didn't want us to be there at the same time. I also found that she had started the signing earlier than appointed, which I interpret to mean she hoped to be gone by the time I arrived.

Let me make something abundantly clear. From the day I moved out in March of 2016 through July of that same year, I was supplying my ex with $650 a week in support. That had been my customary contribution to household funds, and before divorce had become certain, I felt it necessary to continue that. Even after it became certain, I continued this support throughout mediation. I was financially unable to have a home of my own because of the overwhelming majority of my check going to a home I could not sleep in.

To the outside world, it simply looked like I was comfortable couch surfing; a professional and irreverent house guest who simply wouldn't leave. Regardless of how upset my hosts may have become, it was never expressed to me directly. All I ever heard was the second-hand lamentations laid upon me by my ex.

Imagine how uncomfortable that would have been, magnify it by infinity and compound it in eternity. That's how uncomfortable that was. And then to find out that she had already taken it upon herself to remove my name from property that wasn't yet hers by the estimation of the court. I requested a renegotiation of the support that we had begun in court. I was at least determined not to pay for her new car while I slept on a couch and drove a borrowed vehicle. How selfish of me...

On August 28th, she angrily interrupted parenting time that I had with my child. She came to the home of my friends to harass and intimidate me into compliance. I had the foresight to take video (youtube link) of the entire exchange. During the conversation (if it can be called that), she threatened to call the police and report my child kidnapped if I didn't return him. When I refused to let her in the house, she frantically rang the doorbell until my friend answered and instructed her to leave. Even so, she forced her way inside and managed to convince my child to leave with her. At the end of our conversation, she struck me, knocking the camera from my hands and ending the recording.
Everything described above is also in violation of preliminary injunctions issued by the court.

The next day, I was served with a restraining order at work. Yes, a restraining order. In it, I was accused of sending harassing text messages, making aggressive or threatening motions toward her (even though you can clearly see in the video me retreating from her advances toward the door), and physically assaulting her at Christmas.

Shortly thereafter, she retained an attorney. I, being unable to afford one of my own (for the reasons detailed above), requested many times that the restraining order be voluntarily dropped. Every request was denied because she felt "unsafe". I presented the attorney, in good faith, the video recording and a complete transcript of text messages extracted from my phone. The response from the attorney was that they were "self-serving and possibly edited". I couldn't even get vindication from hard physical evidence. I continued to implore that the order be rescinded as my name and character were being assassinated. I continued to be denied.

After moving into my own apartment at the beginning of September 2016, I finally got to have regular time and sleepovers with my child. I was finally getting to be a parent again! After a few weeks of this arrangement, I received an email telling me that I was not providing a proper home for my child and that I would be limited to seeing him for eight hours every other weekend. In case you're wondering, no, an officer of the court or representatives from family services never came to my home to investigate. My apartment was not unfit, just under-furnished. But that was reason enough for my ex to interrupt my time with my child yet again. Being under a restraining order, I could not contact her directly about it, and her attorney would not address the issue.

Court would follow a few months later and after our preliminary hearing, I visited the Protective Orders office at the courthouse and set a date for a hearing before the commissioner. Then, and only then, did she drop the order. I had been denied the opportunity to exonerate myself in front of the court. She had even found a way to take that from me.

She lied about me, robbed me of my rights as a spouse, as a parent... and even then, I sacrificed certain rights. At court, I surrendered my claim to equity in our house, her retirement, and her business interests, all of which the law would have given to me without a fight. All I wanted in negotiations with her attorney was equal parenting time with my child. Instead, I was lawyered out of that.

She took everything she could get from me, and even after all I gave up, she took more. These are the things I kept to myself. These are the things that I endured quietly while some of you were fed stories to the contrary. For those who have the stomach, read the messages above and see the horrible names she called me. Watch the video and tell me that I threatened her in any way. Having been denied everything that was rightfully mine, I wish to claim this one last thing. A balanced view.

And there you have it. My side. Only what I can prove. If I'm the awful person she claimed I was, then maybe we shouldn't be friends after all.

To Impugn with Impunity

I find myself angry about a great many things these days. At first, I thought that I was just being cranky and cantankerous as I approach middle-age. I've contended with bitterness, malcontent, and shades of anxiety and depression. Every time I look into the world around me, I'm awash with frustration and defeat. How could things have gone this wrong?

The answer is gradually.

It didn't all go to shit over night. No, we've been on this path for a long time. Little by little, we've come to accept that mediocrity is exceptional, and the minimal efforts of society at large somehow constitute cooperation and peace.

I do not vote for any particular party, so I have no political agenda with respect to either of the main parties. The last several weeks have made a mockery of democratic elections, constitutional reverence, and liberty. We are presently in the path of the loosest cannon that has ever been unleashed on the American People, and he is armed with a hair [piece] trigger.

Today, Elizabeth Warren was shushed in the Senate for impugning a fellow Senator. I have read the letter from Coretta Scott King and found no injury so severe that her voice as Representative of her constituents needed to be silenced. The audacity that has bled from the GOP following Trump's election reeks of cigars, shitty brandy, old leather chairs, and even older money. Yes, I'm talking about the Old Boys Club.

Your Government doesn't belong to you anymore. It hasn't for decades. Career politicians that will retire wealthy while having done a half-assed job are the ones we keep putting in office. Why? Because they are the only ones with money to run for office? This is absurd! We vote for the douche or the turd sandwich because we believe that the third candidate can't win, and as long as we believe that, we're right! We can only accomplish that in which we believe.

Mr. Trump won by appealing to the lowest common denominators - ignorance and fear. The latter being the offspring of the former, America voted with its uncertainty. We have been sandbagging against our deepest concerns and placing into positions of leadership persons who have the uncanny ability to appear useful by looking busy. If there was half as much effort put into cooperation as there was making sure the other side of the aisle didn't get theirs, then this country could be in a very different position.

We live in a connected world now. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence, some public speaking ability, and decent sense could make a run for office. However, we still see the same formula playing out in every election. Wealthy people with super-PACs who have not lived in the midst of working-class America since before college go on television and tell you how connected they are to the plight of the middle-class. No they aren't... and it's an insult to suggest that the public should buy into it.

What do we look like? Oh... yeah... votes. I forgot.

You're being sold promises in exchange for your future. That's a bit of a high cost for representation that is as familiar with your lot in life as you are with theirs. Though we've been making strides with respect to equality, having more female and minority House members with each passing election, they are still stymied by the collective non-cooperation of Washington. The largest issue that government has suffered from is the inability to drag themselves from the mire of committee upon sub-committee that do little more than achieve impasse.

In my profession, I have had the opportunity to engage the government in its decision making process. This has taught me one unfortunate truth. The bureaucracy is so stratified and convoluted that no single position can affect change. That's not a terrible thing, since things like executive orders are subject to judicial review. The real hurdle is that no group of people can affect change either. They are so compartmentalized in their authorities that no other group (who may have the duty to implement changes dictated by the first group) have the duty to listen to the ones making the decision.

This is magnified by the fact that important data needed by those trying to affect change is under the control of a second governmental entity, who cannot be approached through direct channels, and who otherwise have no procedural accountability to those attempting to affect change.

To be quite blunt, Right Hand needs Left Hand to reach for the soap. Left Hand doesn't know Right Hand is dirty and there is no channel through which to communicate that need. To really put the icing on this bukakke, in which the tax-payer is the catcher, Right Hand is obligated to leave the soap alone... I truly wish I was kidding.

Mr. Trump is used to being a CEO. They tend to wield a lot of unmitigated authority, and my fear is that he's carried that forward into his Presidency. Much of this administration is going to be marked by overturning executive actions that are unconstitutional because our Republic is inherently structured to prevent the bull from running loose in the China shop. This bull may not yet get that message.

In the meantime, however, there are a lot of Senators and Congress[men] who will have their antics go unnoticed because of the shit-storm coming out of the Oval Office. The amount of damage that will be done in the next few years may take decades more to correct. Meanwhile, we have elected officials spending more time quibbling over hurt feelings and procedure than they are on issues of substance. 

This will be a long and bumpy ride...

Chronic[les]: AZ Prop 205

 

So, Arizonans get a chance to vote on legalized recreational marijuana... again. It's come up before and failed by respectable margins. This year may be watershed. Public opinion has shifted heavily in the last few years on medical marijuana use, and we're faced with the most comical presidential tickets since the script of Idiocracy got the green light. People are tired of shitty options with shittier justifications.

I just scanned past CNN for the headlines (for which my ultra-Republican boss calls me a "commie") and saw a graphic that indicates early voting returns in Arizona are favoring the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson. That. Is. Epic. Anyone remotely familiar with Arizona knows that this is just a Republican state. Not that it matters much, since our meager few electoral votes don't amount to a fart in the wind of democracy. Be that as it may, we still vote red. Always have, always... well...

The implication that such a conservative state is willing to shift on something like the presidential candidate, to the untested Libertarian no less, is very favorable to the marijuana lobby. Libertarians, as you may know, generally object to the government telling them what they can and cannot do. As previous entries have intimated, as much as explicitly stated, the nature of marijuana puts it on par with regulating a tomato. There is no scientific purposed to keeping it a Schedule 1 drug.

Like most legislative decisions, this continued status is a result of misinformation and [likely] corporate interests. The emergence of a rumor in 2014 that Phillip Morris was introducing Marlboro M marijuana cigarettes was at the very least plausible, given that special interest groups have being buying representation from Capitol Hill for as long as there have been elected officials. There's nothing partisan about it. The 1% occupy both sides of the aisle, after all, but this is a fabricated story.

Even so, there is the fact that US law disallows placing any naturally occurring substance under patent. There is only one way to capitalize on a substance that cannot be trademarked. Make it illegal to posses, distribute, or transport; issue huge fines for non-compliance.

Does this sound conspiratorial? A little. Is it true? Probably more than anyone really wants to admit. Colorado and Oregon both experienced an interesting set of interrelated phenomena following the legalization of recreational marijuana. The first was pot-tourism. People flocked into the state(s) to get legal weed at licensed dispensaries. The second was a reinforcement of the black market, as locals with connections didn't want to pay the exceptional taxes associated with product purchased through dispensaries. The third, and most telling, was a massive decrease in misdemeanor crimes (mostly related to possession) and a drastic increase in felonies.

Wait, increased crime? Well, really a redistribution based on the nature and degree of the crimes being committed. Dispensaries may be legal at the state level, but they are still subject to federal banking laws which make banking monies made on the drug trade illegal. All transactions for weed, [state] legal or not, have to be in cash. Dispensaries are subject to more armed robberies now than any other retail business.

Curious, don't you think, that the often-hyped increased crime that was expected to accompany legal weed is actually a result of violent crime tangential to the weed sales? No one started crashing cars into school loading zones. Cheeto theft didn't suddenly explode. There weren't bloody dance-offs breaking out in shopping malls. No crime, other than that related to the incapacity to securely perform the business of selling weed, increased.

Prop. 205 covers a lot of legal hurdles that would keep Arizonans out of jail for possession, but I believe that additional steps need to be taken to keep dispensaries safe. That seems to be dependent entirely on the the Federal government though. Simple ideas like state exchanges similar to the child support system would allow Arizona to collect secure transactions from consumers and then distribute funds to retailers, and at the same time collect user fees in the form of taxes to be used for the State. However, to whatever extent those are intertwined with the Fed, everyone still remains exposed.

The States are starting to exercise their authority, reflective of the will of the People. Lawmakers aren't going to be able to deny the public voice much longer. Arizona previously passed ballots that allowed medical marijuana use, first in 1996, then again in 1998. Both of those measures, however, were inadequately worded to protect patients from prosecution. Rather than amending the statutes, the state simply overturned them and waited until later measures received enough support to qualify them for the ballot. In effect, the AZ legislature back-doored the public in what I would call a governmental repurposing of the term "changing lanes without signaling."

It wasn't until Prop. 203 passed in 2010 that medical and compassionate care use came to be. To some degree or another, the voting pubic is of a majority opinion that marijuana should be legal. With elections in just two weeks, I'm hopeful that Arizona joins the ranks of more enlightened society.

We've demonized weed for decades without cause. It's been indoctrinated into entire generations without the benefit of critical examination. It's legal use has been pulled out from under the public by poorly written language. We've been cheated, lied to, and blinded from reality.

The world has a long and intimate romance with pseudoscience and medical quackery. Hopefully, the tide is turning.

Chronic[les]: Objectivity on Opioids

Please know that I do not come into this post with preconceived notions. There is no position to defend or agenda to advance. I'm just a guy with piqued curiosity and access to Google. So here we go.

I've recently heard repeated used of the phrase "opioid crisis". I didn't think much of it at first because, hell, people have been popping pills for as long as I've been aware of the concept of drug abuse. It has always been another behavior in a series of behaviors that Nancy Reagan campaigned against in the 80's. Nothing noteworthy about it. What could possibly have elevated this to the level of 'crisis'?

I have almost no context for it. I once had a prescription for Vicodin following oral surgery. I took it on a schedule recommended by the doctor. To the best of my recollection, the pain didn't actually lessen, so I really didn't see the point in taking it. I was, however, dutiful about it. Every six hours, I downed a pill of such size that my jaws seared in protest. After the sixth dose, I felt queasy and soon vomited. For all the up I've thrown in my life, I've never had to do it through clenched teeth. I felt like a bilious lawn sprinkler.

Opioids (in the form of Vicodin, anyway) did not agree with me. I never saw the appeal, either recreationally, or medically. I never felt better, and I've rarely felt worse. That leaves me hard pressed to understand why their use could even be called a crisis, as my own experience was so unpleasant. Who would want to subject themselves to such a reaction?

While my response was not at all unique, I appear to be in an insignificant minority of people who have not two shits to give about an opium high. Dr. Nora Volkow presented to the US Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control that some 2.1 million Americans, however, had some variety of opioid dependence. Another 467,000 were believed to be addicted to heroin. The link between prescription abuse and heroin addiction is noted to have been increasing.

In 2000, her report states, opioid prescriptions tallied 126 million for the year. By 2010, that number had risen to 210 million. Within the same time frame (2004-2008), emergency room visits from non-prescribed opiate overdoses rose from 144,600 to 305,900. Fatalities from overdoses also tripled.

Stats are a bitch, aren't they?

Let's go beyond stats. What's the science of it? First, let's be clear that even the word "opioid" is not exactly indicative of its origin. Opiates (not to be confused with opioids) are derivative from the opium poppy and include morphine and heroin. Opioids are chemical compounds that react to the opiate receptors in our brains. They are easily synthesized, effective at pain management, and nearly identical with respect to their addictive properties. Even anti-withdrawal compounds like methadone, which is used to help heroin users, are commonly abused.

Addiction is so common because opioids, in the long term, inhibit the body's ability to to produce its own opioid chemicals like endorphins and encephalins. Withdrawal symptoms accompany this absence of opioids and hilarity ensues.

Great... Useful information, right? Actually, it's troubling. Dr. Volkow's report draws an interesting correlation. Doctors are getting wise and becoming reluctant to hand out scrips for opioids. 2013 was the first down-tick in prescription issuance in twenty years, which should ostensibly be a good thing. Arizona even enacted in 2017 limits on prescription of opioid pain-relievers to a five-day supply.  However, where pill-poppin' gets more difficult, heroin makes an effective and economical substitute. Heroin dosing is difficult to regulate, as is the quality of the product. But what choice is there? The medical community unwittingly created  a generation of junkies and now has to figure out a way to get them clean.

Research is being conducted into technologies that will reduce addictive effects of opioids. One of the more promising is one that would allow opioids to interact with cannabinoid receptors in the brain. These receptors work perfectly well with marijuana, as the name implies. Marijuana, as previously posted, is non-toxic, non-addictive, carries lower risk of tolerance, and concurrently treats a number of other illnesses.

The state of Massachusetts has been treating opioid dependency with medical marijuana, publishing one of the first public reports just in October, 2015. While it is far from being a clinical slam-dunk, it's another bit of information that points to the potential for medical marijuana use.

This is an issue that has taken on personal importance for me and I intend to drill down to the irrefutable facts. The world is not as complicated as bureaucracy makes it. Natural compounds are available for our treatment and improved health. Ignorance is a poor excuse to create crises such as this one. It's an even poorer excuse for resolving it with the traditionally painful and health-negative protocols we use.

Interestingly, the existence of the opioid crisis is not really debated. There are no political divides on the issue. The Left and Right agree that it's an issue, which is exceedingly rare. It may be because of the equality with which it strikes at Americans. Every racial group, income level, geographic region, and background are affected by it.

In researching this topic, I really didn't find any source of information that refuted the existence of this crisis. One downplayed it as minor percentages, but seems to be ignorant of how many people may be dependent by focusing on how many die from use. That seems somehow insufficient to me.

I will continue to make this a topic of interest. It does, after all, have my curiosity. There can be no greater impetus for knowledge than wonder.

Chronic[les]: Suspension of Disbelief

I finally got to see the 1936 American propaganda film, Reefer Madness. For those that haven't seen it, it's a pseudo-biopic that claims to a retelling of actual events. It's corny. It's melodramatic. It's also wildly inaccurate.

The film portrays events surrounding the purported dangers of marijuana abuse. Centered on a couple of unfortunate youth who fall in with the wrong crowd, the rapid decline into madness is frightening, or rather would be if it had any basis in fact. Through the magic of scientific discovery, we now know the representation to be a complete farce. The US Government funded this film, which is shockingly prurient for the period, to induce hysterical support for a ban on marijuana.

The success of the anti-marijuana campaign that followed the release of the film was dependent entirely on the ignorance of the public, which was seemingly considerable. The year following its release, the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act was passed. Within that legislation, heavy restrictions on the sale and transport of the drug were in place, along with penalties for mishandling. From that point forward, weed was increasingly criminalized until the final complete ban instituted by President Nixon in the early 70's.

In my previous post on this topic, I pointed out that marijuana is non-toxic, non-carcinogenic, and non-addictive. One would be hard pressed then to identify just what the objection is. Having grown up as a child of the 80's, I sat through the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) presentations. I even knew our school's DARE officer. I learned to "just say no" like Nancy Reagan wanted. I also accepted, by way of indoctrination, that marijuana was a "gateway drug."

I recall in the 5th grade having our school counselor do a drug presentation. He asked one classmate after another if drugs were "bad." Without hesitation, they answered "yes." Mr. White continued to ask students until he came to one who said "no." It was then that he let us in on the little secret that no one really bothered to tell us about. The definition of what a drug was. It's remarkably simple, really.

A drug is a substance that is put into the body to change how the body works.

This is why Mr. White insisted on finding a student who said drugs weren't bad. They're not. At least not intrinsically. However, Reefer Madness was produced in such a way that demonized marijuana. The portrayal makes it clear that even minimal exposure robs one of their faculties, turning them into a lust driven lunatic bent on mayhem and murder.

Show me an article, publication, news story, or any other vetted source that tells such a tale. Truth is, they don't exist. Harry J. Anslinger, first Commissioner of the US Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics, began lobbying heavily to criminalize marijuana following the repeal of Volstead Act (Prohibition), which died with the ratification of the 21st Amendment in 1933. Previously, he'd been quite neutral and disinterested in the use of marijuana. However, setting his sights on a new pariah, he launched a campaign to make weed illegal. He cited dozens, if not hundreds, of stories of murder or violence committed under the influence of marijuana. Most of them were simply falsely attributed to cannabis. Some were outright fabrications. The tactic was effective, however. He garnered enough support to put it before Congress, even convincing them of his lies, and helped get the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act passed.

Yes, I titled this entry "Suspension of Disbelief." The phrase normally refers to the ability of a film to convince you, at least while you're watching, that the events are real. In this case, I'm not referring to Reefer Madness. I'm most interested in the concerted efforts of US officials to ban something which presents no public health hazard and kills precisely zero people each year from disease related to consumption.

I cannot suspend my disbelief! I admit that deliberate ignorance is a pet peeve. In this case, the deliberate ignorance of scientific evidence, and the active limitation on establishing more scientific data, for the purposes of moral temperance... staggers me.

Logical conclusions are not hard to establish. Logically, our lawmakers are ignorant of scientific fact. Logically, the legislature has no interest in the impact that criminalization of marijuana has on non-violent offenders who end up in prison for extended stays. Logically, our elected officials are mired in decades-old propaganda with little respect for reality.

I will agree that these are incomplete conclusions and that other truths may exist. However, this theory explains the observation based on the available evidence.

Why is this topic becoming one of my favorites? Because it's so easy to pick on. The laundry list of fallacious reasoning, collusion, and public deception make it a poster child for malicious governance. The polls will be opening in a few weeks, and we will again have the opportunity to weigh in on our representation. Each passing year brings me a little bit more angst and disbelief in the people who waste taxpayer dollars while claiming to be public servants.

My next entry will focus on the current "opioid crisis." Juxtaposed against the Federal ban on medical marijuana, you may be just as confused as I am.