Fox News has an article today about Cops second career choices.  That’s not true, the guys in the story didn’t take up needlepoint, or open a museum dedicated to toilet seats, they are notable because they joined the newly legal marijuana industry.  My emotional reaction is to dismiss these guys as opportunists, that they were never “real cops”.  But that is unfair and untrue.

It is an easy trap to fall into. Rather than focus on behavior that is unacceptable, the trend is to focus on inanimate objects. Guns, booze, drugs, soda, sugar and trans fats, all bad. What we mean to condemn is how each of these things can be misapplied or abused to create a bad result.  Cops fell into the trap when we allowed Richard Nixon to frame the “War on Drugs”.  The war was and remains a war on drug dealers.

The war on drugs was my war.  I never fought an inanimate object.  I fought some pretty evil sons-a-bitches who were in the game for money and power. They didn’t even have the bad excuse that they were trying to mitigate the expense of their own addiction, because they didn’t use.  They “knew” that with dope every woman was a whore and that men would do their bidding. They set out to prove that on a regular basis.  Ever seen a woman have sex with a dog? Throw the bitch a $20 crack rock and let the fun begin.

I don’t think I ever ran across a doper that was not involved in other criminal behavior, over and above their use of a banned substance.  Inevitably we would find evidence of welfare fraud, stolen property, other drug use and sale, child neglect and abuse, tax evasion and other issues indicative of a marginal lifestyle.  

It wasn’t one drug was worse than another, it was the culture that one embraced, once that path was chosen. I have maintained that there is no difference in the thought process that causes one person to choose drugs while another chooses to sexually abuse children.  In each instance, society describes what is acceptable behavior and what the penalty is for crossing the line.  The drug abuser and the sexual predator cross the line with their eyes wide open, knowing the consequences of their behavior.  They have decided that the law does not apply to them.  

I am not convinced that marijuana represents the panacea its proponents advance.  The medical research is conflicting.  I find it interesting that all the years that Mexican weed has been available at low cost the legalization fight was no more than a pipe dream.  With the advent of high cost “hybrid”, “home grown”, “sinsemilla”, “skunk” and the increase in THC, along with the methodology to control the profits from seedling to end user sale the impetus for legalization has taken off. Studies reported in the British medical journal “Lancet” are ignored Although they show an increase in psychosis in those individuals who use high potency marijuana on a daily basis (Marijuana). These studies have shown consistent results for 20 years.

Back to the cops and their second career.  It appears that most of them are working in the compliance and security end of the business.  They find themselves in the same situation as their great grandfathers eighty years ago, transitioning from prohibition to a legal liquor industry.  I don’t have a beef with that.

It remains to be seen what the effect will be in the communities where marijuana is legal.  This may lead to an increase in employment in those jobs that Americans won’t do.  Users may find that ditch digging and stoop labor is now the only occupation for which they are suitable.

Legalization may take the stigma off of marijuana.  That doesn’t mean that those involved in the industry don’t need watching.  After all, one bootlegger made the transition from gangster to United States Ambassador to the Court of Saint James (England).  That does not negate the fact that the Nazi asshole and all his spawn would be evil no matter what they did.