Sun, 25 Apr 2004, Tallahassee Democrat (FL), Copyright: 2004 Tallahassee Democrat. Author: Gerald Ensley.

IN THE GOOD OLE DAYS, WE SMOKED POT :hee:

There are two things you can count on at 3:30 a.m. at our house: I'll get up to use the bathroom and the college kids in the nearby apartment complex still will be whooping it up at the top of their lungs.

Today's college kids party late, and their drug of choice is alcohol, which tends to make people loud. Starting about 2 a.m., the kids roll in from the bars, set the stereo speakers on the deck, crank up the tunes and yell delightedly until daylight.

We're two blocks over, so it's not too bad for us. But the neighbors alongside the complex are going crazy. They call the cops, the cops chase one party inside and a half-hour later a different party erupts outside. Some neighbors have called the cops three times in one night and still not gotten much sleep.

I'm all for young people and partying. But I tell you what, that kind of thing didn't happen in my day. No, sir. When I went to college, we smoked pot when we partied. That kept us mellow and quiet. The last thing we wanted to do was go outside, make a lot of noise, annoy the neighbors and have them call the cops.

We need to get back to those days. We need to legalize marijuana. We should have done it already.

It's chic to complain about the baby-boomer generation. To say we are self-indulgent and materialistic. To say we haven't fought a great war, haven't written the great American novel and haven't put an imprint on society.

I say baloney. Baby boomers demanded sensitivity, tolerance and equality from society. We made this a better world for black people and women and gays and gave voice to a dozen previously ignored issues.

But we didn't follow through on drugs. We smoked pot and said we would legalize it when we ran the world. Well, we run the world now, and we haven't done anything. We should be ashamed.

The war on drugs is killing us. More than 5 million people have been arrested in the past decade for marijuana violations. We spend $25 billion a year for law enforcement, legal fees and incarceration of drug offenders. The laws and penalties against marijuana violate a half-dozen constitutional guarantees (privacy, due process, equal protection, freedom of religion).

We are ruining lives and wasting money in a fruitless defense of a false morality. The urge to intoxicate is as old as mankind. The majority of those who use drugs recreationally also conduct productive lives. Those who become addicted to drugs have medical and psychological problems that need treatment, not punishment.

We should legalize all drugs. But marijuana would be a good start: Statistics show only one in 100 of those who regularly smoke marijuana goes on to regularly use cocaine or heroin.

There are two reasons why boomers haven't changed the drug laws. One is they became parents and became just as fearful and hypocritical as their parents. They bought into the scare tactics of drug opponents and didn't trust their children to make wise choices. The other reason is drug prohibitions lost resonance with baby boomers. They got older, quit smoking dope and quit caring about the issue.

They need to care again. We made the world better for black people and women and gays by sustained support of legal changes. We can make the world better for everyone with sustained support of marijuana legalization.

Then maybe we can all get some sleep in my neighborhood.

Here's my story from today- I think it relates nicely:

At five-ten traffic is still crowding lower Main Street, sidewalks squirming with humanity on a lovely Sunday evening in May. Pretty college girls yell hello and run across the street into each other’s arms; two citified women in drop-dead chic sneer a little as they pick their way past the crowd of smoking ban refugees outside McGillicuddy’s . An SUV occupied by a lone male glides by blasting a Celtic fiddle tune, and one of the smokers breaks into a jig. Young families amble amongst the collegians.
In the space of five minutes, I count two state troopers’ cars, a sheriff’s department K-9 unit, and two New Paltz Police Department cars passing through the intersection at Plattekill, North Front, and Main. At 5:20, a state trooper car is parked in front of the Bank of New York. I ask the trooper if his attendance is incurring overtime on the New Paltz taxpayers’ tab and he says no, just a little friendly help with traffic control. At about 5:25 a SUNY New Paltz campus police car shows up, parks at a funky angle in front of Ariel Books, and begins actually doing traffic control, shunting cars which come down Plattekill Avenue down Front Street instead of up 299. Some drivers apparently ask him what’s up. “Waste of the taxpayer’s money, if you ask me,” he calls to one, and “No, legalize marijuana- gay marriage was last week,” to another.
On the bench in front of the library, a young woman pores over a text and a notebook, barely looking up. Another gal comes out of the library and looks around a little bewildered at the suddenly empty street, the policemen. “What on earth?” she says. “It’s a marijuana legalization march,” I explain. “Oh,” she says, seeming a little relieved that it’s all part of someone’s plan; asked for a comment, she can’t summon a strong feeling either way.
And here they come, a small but determined crew of perhaps fifty at the most, singing out loud. Hidey hidey hidey ho/Prohibition’s got to go/hidey hidey hidey hey/marijuana’s here to stay. They are actually quite melodic and on-key for a random crowd, and they draw cheers and whistles from the folks on the corner by P&G’s. They are whisked around the corner, paraded past the nose- and likely videocam- of the trooper’s car by one New Paltz PD unit in the lead and three behind them. The pace is swift. The girl on the bench remains immersed in her studies, never looking up
Two minutes later, longtime activist Ed Haffmans ambles down the street, casually carrying a sign with a rainbow pot leaf. “I almost didn’t want to take this one- it was the prettiest, though,” he says, explaining that he’d stopped to talk to someone and gotten separated from the main contingent. “I’m the sidewalk brigade. You know, the organizers would have been willing to do it on the sidewalk, save all this money”- he gestures to the trooper, who is chatting through his window with a resident in a checked flannel shirt- “but the police wanted it done this way.”
“I was at the village board meeting where they talked about that, and everyone seemed to agree that closing the street was safer,” I recall. Trustees Hebel and Danskin had proffered symbolic Nay votes against the inconvenience of closing Main Street on Sunday afternoon, but they needn’t have fretted. The officers here in the Home of the Protest have it down to a science; five minutes before and almost immediately after the march sings its way past, the SUVs and Beemers are flowing as usual.
At the meeting, projected numbers of marchers had been in the hundreds. Haffmans tells me there are about four times as many people at the rally on campus as came downtown. “You tend to get two types of people on the pot issue,” he muses, “those who are paranoid about making a public stand and those who just don’t care.” I mention to him the campus cop’s comment about wasting taxpayer dollars and he says, that’s exactly the point.
According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), whose New Paltz chapter sponsors this march, twenty million Americans admitted to having smoked in the past year. Seven hundred thousand were arrested. Federal mandatory minimum sentencing and New York State’s Rockefeller laws can still make for lengthy sentences, although several states have decriminalized possession of small amounts, some have legalized medicinal use, and Canada appears to be moving toward legalization- to the grouchy disgust of the federal government’s drug czars.
The state trooper drives off with a friendly wave. Don Kerr pops out of P&G’s and tells me that the consensus of the good gray gentlemen at the bar seemed to be that they’d rather take their chances with a driver who’s been smoking herb at the wheel than a drunk. “Stoned people go under the speed limit and put their turn signals on two minutes early,” is how he translates the general gist.
I head for home, picking up a six-pack and Marlboros for a neighbor at the gas station on the way. Signing on to the Internet, I find myself in receipt of an email touting “xanax prozac vicoden lowest prices” and another trying to sell me Viagra. Delete. Delete. Sigh. Just another NORML afternoon.

I am not going to write a big long story, or even try to sound like a literary expert as do the two of you,, Great writing gals!!! You should think of taking that up profesionally. I do agree that marajuanna should be legal, ya never saw anyone smoke a joint and want to fight, and it is alot less harmful than alcohol. I don't smoke pot anymore, haven't in a long time. But if it were legalized, I would definatly light up a big one, kick back, and LMAO I need a good laugh anyway.

oh, by the way taino, I do not think that all drugs should be legalized. even though my fiance got busted for selling cocaine, I do not think it should be legalized. It is just too addictive, and it ruins lives. I have never tried it, and don't ever want to. I know I would like it too much. I love stacker 2's enough as it is, and now those have been banned. But anyway, I think that it is just too harmful of a drug. And heroin, I really don't know much about that drug either, just that it is expensive and very addictive. I don't think either of them should ever be legalized.

Vickie, I think we need a world that makes sense so people won't be in such a rush to numb out. I agree those are dangerous drugs- to people with healthy lives, they don't need the law to tell them no any more than they need a law telling them not to cut their feet off with a dull spoon.
and BTW, I happen to BE a writer, thanks- maybe that's why I sound like one :)