Maureen Dowd, "Two Redheaded Strangers ": All You Never Wanted to Know About Eating Marijuana

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Two Redheaded Strangers," subtitled "Willie Nelson Feels Maureen Dowd’s Pain," Dowd describes a visit with 81-year-old Willie Nelson, which apparently was devoted to a discussion of how to use marijuana. Nelson told Dowd that he doesn't "do edibles." Fascinating.

Perhaps of more interest to me, Dowd concludes her opinion piece by observing:

"Given all the horrors in the world now, I said, maybe President Obama needs to chill out by reuniting the Choom Gang."

Given all the horrors in the world now, I say, maybe President Obama needs to do the United States a favor by replacing Biden, Kerry, Hagel and Holder with the Choom Gang.

Maureen Dowd, "Don’t Harsh Our Mellow, Dude": Dowd Rehashes Buckley's Extraterritorial Marijuana Cruise

“The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy.”

― William F. Buckley Jr.

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more."

- Dorothy, "The Wizard of Oz" (1939)

Perhaps you recall how conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley once sailed his yacht outside US territorial waters in order to smoke . . . gasp . . . marijuana. Well, today, several decades after Buckey shocked the nation with his daring escapade, Maureen Dowd tells us in her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Don’t Harsh Our Mellow, Dude" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/opinion/dowd-dont-harsh-our-mellow-dude.html?ref=opinion&_r=0) how she travelled to the wilds of Colorado to sample . . . gasp . . . edible marijuana. Dowd writes of her experience:

"But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.

I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me."

Dowd goes on to describe a report of increasing numbers of adults and children hospitalized in Colorado after gulping down marijuana-laced goodies.

No, I am not about to travel to Colorado anytime soon to partake in the "fun." You see, I am a chocolate purist: I like my chocolate without peanut butter, without rum, and certainly without pot. More to the point, I can't afford eight hours in the Merry Land of Oz.

But once again, I stray from the substance at hand.

A friend suffering from three herniated discs recently visited a world renowned orthopedic surgeon in search of pain relief. My friend had tried epidural spinal injections of steroids, which wore off all too quickly, and he had also taken Lyrica, which had caused him hallucinations. The orthopedic surgeon's recommendation: medical marijuana.

You see, seemingly unbeknownst to Dowd, there are 483 known chemical components of the plant, and THC is just one of them. Various strains of the plant have different levels of THC and other chemicals, e.g. CBD, which has been linked to pain relief.

Fortunately, I do not suffer from pain requiring anything beyond an occasional aspirin or naproxen, but if I were required to make the choice between Lyrica and medical marijuana with higher levels of CBD and diminshed levels of THC, I would opt for the latter.

Perhaps you remember Vioxx, a pain killer manufactured by Merck, which was pulled from the market after it was determined that it posed "substantial heart risk" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/business/merck-agrees-to-pay-950-million-in-vioxx-case.html). Yes, faced with a pain treatment dilemma, I would first want to determine if CBD offered relief.

Dowd? We've never met, but I recommend that she remain faithful to her chardonnay east of the Hudson.

Maureen Dowd, "Dealing With Pot": A "Great Social Experiment"?

Writing from the "Mile-High City," Maureen Dowd, in her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Dealing With Pot" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/opinion/dowd-dealing-with-pot.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), describes Governor John Hickenlooper's reservations concerning Colorado's legalization of marijuana:

"'Great social experiments always have risk,' says Hickenlooper, who, amid floods, fires, droughts and shootings, finds the pot issue bogarting his time. The state, subtly supported by the president and attorney general, must conjure up a regulatory system, sort out legal and banking complexities, and quickly try to head off deleterious effects.

'It’s like opening a restaurant,' the governor says. 'Just because you have three great weeks does not make it a successful restaurant.'"

Legalization of marijuana is a "great social experiment"? "Great" in which sense of the word?

Although its rollout has been a disaster and its implementation could prove even more catastrophic, Obamacare is an enormous "social experiment," introducing socialized medicine to the United States.

The legalization of marijuana, on the other hand, is a non-prescription remedy for the anxiety and pain of an empire in decline.

And whereas the United States may be literally going to pot, Obama's new-found friends in Iran are hanging ever higher numbers of drug offenders (see: http://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2013/02/11/Iran-Drug-Execution-Frenzy-Continues-Year).

In this as yet obscure clash of civilizations, who comes out on top? As Edith Hamilton once wrote:

"When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again."

May the Lord have mercy on us.

Maureen Dowd, "Now Playing in Denver: Reefer Gladness": Time for Me to Go Back Into the Jungle

"Saigon. Shit. I'm still only in Saigon. Every time, I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said 'yes' to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter."

- Martin Sheen as Captain Benjamin L. Willard, "Apocalypse Now" (1979)

Do you remember a stoned Captain Willard, alone in a Saigon hotel room, smashing his fist into the mirror (a "fishing accident") while waiting for a mission? Yup, accidents have a way of happening when your brain is fried.

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Now Playing in Denver: Reefer Gladness" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/dowd-now-playing-in-denver-reefer-gladness.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), Maureen Dowd describes preparations in Colorado for the legalization of marijuana. She concludes by telling us:

"At a warehouse under construction in a spot that used to be a bakery, Dixie Elixers is cooking up edible, drinkable and topical pot treats, trying to become the Coke of toking. With a big foil-covered Willy Wonka machine, they extract the THC from the plant and whip up products from chocolate truffles to bath soaks to massage oil, all in modern silvery packaging meant to scream 'safe.'

Nonetheless, Denver is the Wild West of weed. And things will be confusing, evolving and dicey for some time. As Dixie Elixirs Chief Operating Officer Chuck Smith tells his team, 'We’re building the airplane while we’re flying it.'"

Well, I hope that no one in Colorado will be flying the airplane while smoking it.

Query: Does smoking marijuana promote interaction among people, or is it more of an individualistic, i.e. narcissistic, joyride? Is it really, as Obama would have it, "a bad habit and a vice" and not "more dangerous than alcohol"?

And although the walls around me are not moving in a little tighter, I have to ask what Ali and Hassan, off in the wilds of Iran, are thinking as we grow weaker and they get stronger.

Time for me to go back into the jungle.

[See also: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/new-york-times-editorial-irans-charm.html]

David Brooks, "Weed: Been There. Done That.": What About Antidepressants, Pain Killers and Alcohol?

Back in 2011, there was a surprising, or perhaps not so surprising, revelation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db76.htm):

"Antidepressants were the third most common prescription drug taken by Americans of all ages in 2005–2008 and the most frequently used by persons aged 18–44 years. From 1988–1994 through 2005–2008, the rate of antidepressant use in the United States among all ages increased nearly 400%."

Pain killers? The current market for such drugs in the US exceeds $7 billion per year and is growing by leaps and bounds.

Alcohol? More than $100 billion is spent each year on alcoholic beverages in the US.

Needless to say, antidepressants, pain killers and alcohol can all be abused and result in addiction. To what extent should government ideally regulate their availability and dispensation? It's not a simple question.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled"Weed: Been There. Done That." (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/opinion/brooks-weed-been-there-done-that.html?ref=opinion&_r=0), David Brooks acknowledges that he smoked marijuana for a little while during his teenage years, but then, together with most of his friends, moved away from it. Regarding marijuana's legalization in Colorado and Washington, Brooks concludes:

"But, of course, these are the core questions: Laws profoundly mold culture, so what sort of community do we want our laws to nurture? What sort of individuals and behaviors do our governments want to encourage? I’d say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship. In those societies, government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned.

In legalizing weed, citizens of Colorado are, indeed, enhancing individual freedom. But they are also nurturing a moral ecology in which it is a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be."

I don't know if marijuana is potentially any more dangerous than antidepressants, pain killers and alcohol. I recently had a discussion with one of the world's leading orthopedists, and he favors the dispensation by doctors of medical marjuana over prescription drugs for certain kinds of severe chronic pain. It makes sense: After thousands of years of use by humans, we pretty much know the side effects of marijauna as opposed to those of many prescription drugs.

But back to Brooks's conclusion: What sort of community do we want our laws to nurture, and what sort of individuals do our governments want to encourage? Who writes these laws, and who is this "government" to which Brooks is referring? Perhaps Brooks should hold a televised round table discussion on this topic with Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer.

Where can I find one of Brooks's healthy societies?

Brooks's "highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts"? Sorry, David, but don't go forcing opera on me! I might end up smoking marijuana.

A "moral ecology in which it is a bit harder to be the sort of person most of us want to be"? Here I am, almost 60-years-old, and I still don't know what "sort of person" I want to be. You see, David, it's still taking shape, and I doubt whether I want to be the same "sort of person" as you. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with your choice, but I also prefer to choose, to the extent possible, without interference.

[I stand corrected: I was just informed that antidepressants are not addictive; anti-anxiety medications, e.g., Xanax, are addictive.]

Bill Keller, "How to Legalize Pot": White House Staffers Today in Desperate Need of the Substance

Today, there is an explosive new revelation from an anonymous "senior White House official" that chief White House lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, knew in April that an audit of the IRS would probably show that agency employees targeted conservative groups (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/05/new-york-times-irs-inquiry-status-told.html). And Ruemmler passed this information on to whom? Stay tuned. Meanwhile, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has again taken the day off, but Bill Keller is still on the job. In his latest Times op-ed entitled "How to Legalize Pot"
(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/opinion/keller-how-to-legalize-pot.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), Keller informs us:

"A few places, like the Netherlands, have had limited legalization; many jurisdictions have decriminalized personal use; and 18 states in this country have approved the drug for medical use. (Twelve others, including New York, are considering it.) But Washington and Colorado have set out to invent a whole industry from scratch and, in theory, to avoid the shortcomings of other markets in legal vices — tobacco, alcohol, gambling — that lurched into being without much forethought, and have supplied, along with much pleasure, much misery.

. . . .

[D]espite new moves toward legalization in Latin America, no one expects Congress to remove cannabis from the list of criminal substances any time soon. ('Not until the second Hillary Clinton administration,' [drug policy expert Mark]Kleiman says.)"

Well, these days Hillary's 2016 prospects are looking none to hot.

But not to worry. I have it from an anonymous "senior White House official" that unbeknownst to the president, once a toker of Mary Jane, feverish efforts are underway in Washington to legalize the substance. After today's revelation concerning Ruemmler, some in the Obama administration are claiming to be in desperate need of this "medicinal" drug.

Kristof's "End the War on Pot": Theng U mR Kirtioff

In New Yuk tmes collllum of today dat (http://www.nytimes.com/), oooopth, I mean (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/opinion/28kristof.html?hp)=funnny!-, Nik Kritooff writ to lealize pot. Thang yu kRizoff. U one koool dud! U the man! Ths nexth hith fer u!

I texththise mssage aftur byying my med marwarna and drive. Thnk u mR. Kritof for supprting med maryana. I think you opiniion wll, I thing itwill, Ithink the well. Oophs, I forget wat I wante to say. Funny!!!

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