Enjoying a nice quiet day here, as it is blustery outside... windy enough for me to abort any mission beyond the property line. It has been cool too, only in the 50s, unlike days past where temps were more pleasant. Meh, no worries, I still got stuff done, since I'm preparing for this upcoming project. I was just thinking about the strange uncharted territory we're in as a state, now that Arizona has legalized recreational marijuana use. Even the recruiters for this upcoming project said that the company lawyers are in uncharted waters, since legal weed means a positive result won't necessarily bar one from employment or get one fired, go figure. A sea change from old rules & regs concerning weed, which should've been legal for the past 50 years anyway, as far as I'm concerned.
Make it like alcohol, with citations or arrests given for driving under the influence, acting like a fool in public, etc., and tax the $h!t out of it to drum up revenue for specific projects like infrastructure or transportation, NOT some general slush fund which scumbag politicians can dip into at will. Anyway, as I understood the guy's spiel yesterday, under the new guidelines a positive test result will only be significant after a safety violation, an incident at work requiring testing, and situations of that nature... and if nobody was injured or killed, I guess the worker who tested positive can actually come back to work, once a doctor determines that there's no weed in his or her system. Also, as I understood the recruiter, a positive result on pre-employment drug screens won't bar anyone from a job.
Kinda weird, huh? Not to imply that this legitimate company tied in with ADOT (the state) only hires POTHEADS, LOL... many of us, myself included, tested completely negative for all drugs. I just find it interesting, how the laws are evolving where weed is concerned, having seen it blacklisted all my adult life. Well, not in Kalifornia, I had SE-WIOUS CHRONIC delivered to my door before I bailed outta there, and I actually had a weed card in Show Low, though that was more for my guests than for me... I *MIGHT* have taken a bong hit or two between beers while shooting pool on the 8' table, LOL. But that card expired and I never bothered to renew it, as I considered the $275 annual renewal fee too ridiculous. Since I've lived in Benson, I've only had a few hits of weed with visiting friends...
More for old times' sake than anything else... as a young skateboarder from a broken home, I thought my friends & I had smoked up all the weed on the planet, but evidently we missed some, BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I used to smoke (or simply eat thumb-sized nuggets washed down with beer) before sailing and dirt biking too, as it increased my sense of freedom and actually heightened awareness in certain situations... same goes for psilocybin, one can do all kinds of outdoor activities on that stuff, LOL. Hey, good enough for the Viking Berserker Mushroom Cults, good enough for Me, AYE??? And I'm talking about being in the wilderness too, not bebopping down some Big City sidewalk while stoned out of my f#%ng mind, LOL. Damn...
I learned something else today: even though Prop 207 passed by a large margin, adult recreational use won't actually begin until April at the earliest, since the state has to distribute licenses & whatnot. I thought it would go into effect New Year's Day, like most laws recently passed in a November election, but evidently there's more to it where weed is concerned. So you AZ potheads won't be able to walk in and easily score weed till later next year... however, as I understand the current situation, if you're caught with weed on your person, I guess it's okay, this is one of those gray areas I mentioned earlier. Not that I'll be testing it, though I'll probably buy a bag sometime next year, just to have some nugs handy when friends come to play pool. No tweakin' crackerheads though...
I suppose my personal philosophy on drug use boils down to this: I don't care if friends take bong hits on my view deck to relax, I'm down on tobacco but I don't really care about weed use. Same goes for mushrooms & alcohol... all natural substances, or made from natural substances, so if they're good enough for Mother Nature, well, they're good enough for me, as long as those getting drunk or high aren't behind the wheel, making fools of themselves in public, etc., etc. On the other hand, I won't allow any chemical-heads or users of meth, crack, 'cid, PCP, Big Pharma cr@p, etc., on my property... they are all VERBOTEN!!! Any substance which is NOT natural, but processed in labs (medical or clandestine) from nasty $h!t, well, that ain't ALLOWED on my property, LOL.
I mean seriously, look at meth, in my mind perhaps the worst offender... the cr@p is made entirely from toxic substances!!! I know, because I used to haul hazardous waste to registered treatment facilities nationwide, and I recognized the same cr@p from ingredient lists for meth and other chemical trash. The cr@p rots your teeth, for starters... "meth mouth" is a real thing, LOL. Then there's the whole downward spiral to one's life, as I witnessed many times in Coronado, though not necessarily among my own circle of friends. The saddest part was seeing the young girls who tried to use it as a dieting tool... they'd get hooked on that nasty cr@p and their lives would go south in a BIG OL' HURRY. I warned all my nieces & nephews about that cr@p too... the good uncle.
Granted, unlike me dear departed mum, I'm no saint, and I've had my share of bat$h!t crazy Hunter S. Thompson-style adventures... back in the day, my friends from the surf shop & I would do massive amounts of blow, the Peruvian Flake or Colombian Rock variety, but thankfully we all grew out of that before we went bankrupt and our lives imploded, LOL. So I've seen both sides of that equation, but as adults we all make choices, AYE? And Big Pharma? I NEVER got into that cr@p, with the exception of some Valium, Quaaludes, and whatnot long ago... never bothered with the Big Pharma opiates, though I smoked opium in the past, and enjoyed it, LOL. Didn't happen very often, so it never really became a problem, it was just an adventure back in my teens & 20s, ya know?
To wrap up this discourse on drugs, I'll say again that I have no problem with ADULTS using marijuana, mushrooms, peyote, alcohol, etc., so long as they do it in a way which does NOT endanger others. These are NATURAL SUBSTANCES, or substances derived from natural ingredients (in the case of alcohol), and I reckon Mother Nature put 'em here for our use, if we're so inclined. But all that chemical trash sucks, and it ruins lives, therefore it should all be banned and stiff sentences should be given to meth cookers, runners, dealers and other fooliots... same for all the other chemical cr@p. One might argue that regular cocaine is derived from a plant and therefore falls into the first category, but excessive processing makes it undesirable, except perhaps in medical procedures.
That's my take on drug use, and I can honestly say that I first smoked weed in the early-to-mid-'70s. I can still remember scoring O-Zs (or ounces) of Lumbo Gold from a friend who worked at Texaco, he had a Jeep parked behind the station and we'd walk back there to make the transaction in the dimly-lit alley. The bags were huge too, "four fingers" of good sweet Colombian Gold smuggled all the way from the Southern Hemisphere, LOL. The buds were burly but they had seeds and "lumber"---we'd clean that weed and twist fatties to burn before walking over to the Village Theatre to watch the latest surf or skate flick, LOL. As years passed, the weed got stronger & stronger, and now ya have these chronic strains that are ballistic... medical weed, one hit & yer in a wheelchair, aye?
ANYWAY, THAT'S MY TAKE ON DRUG USE... STAY AWAY FROM THE CHEMICAL CR@P, INCLUDING BIG PHARMA, AND YOU'LL BE ALRIGHT. TIME FOR THIS KID TO GRAB ANOTHER COLD ONE, Y'ALL KNOW I LIKE MY COLD BEER!!! AFTER THIS UGLY YEAR, I RECKON I EARNED IT, LOL. I'M OFF, Y'ALL BE GOOD, AND STAY UNDER THE RADAR WHERE APPLICABLE, LOL... "THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN'!!!"
P.S. The way these scumbag politicians have acted all year, I reckon they're stoned or stupid... smokin' the GOOD $H!T, no doubt, on the taxpayer's dime, of course. "$50,000 per ounce? No problem, got the money right here..." BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I probably shouldn't laugh, since the joke's on us, LOL.
