Howdy, Aggies. Did you have a good Halloween? Was it positively spooky? Was it full of debauchery, drunken diatribes and dangerous drugs?
And by dangerous, I mean deadly. I mean invoking chaos. Injurious to society, even.
The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department warned parents to inspect their children’s candy this Halloween. There are evil people out there trying to lace your children’s treats with marijuana, don’t cha know?
Those poor, precious children. They must be the prime targets of evil, drug dealing Mexicans! And crazy leftist fucks.
Really, though. What about our children? Right now I hear ultra-conservative, god-fearing Helen Lovejoy from the “Simpsons,” in her shrill voice, screeching her famous line, “Won’t somebody please think of the children?”
Prop. 19 opponents are certainly thinking of them.
One of their more famed arguments against the proposition includes the possibility of “drugged driving.” Employees that operate heavy machinery and smoke dope needn’t worry about job security, lest they get in a wreck.
You know what that means, right?
Stoned bus drivers causing havoc on neighborhood streets, carrying your screaming children away, giving a whole new meaning to the Hyphy Movement’s saying of “riding the yellow bus”.
The No on Prop. 19’s official website shows it. Before you can even enter the content of the site, you’re faced with the deleterious image of a wrecked school bus, poised sinisterly next to red, boldfaced text on black.
The ominous splash page matches the spooky sounding track of the Chamber of Commerce’s recent No on Prop. 19 radio ad. “Imagine coming out of surgery and the nurse caring for you was high – or having to work harder on your job to make up for a co-worker who shows up high on pot.”
Oh. My. God.
Indeed, imagine that.
I’m imagining a fucked up world where pot suppliers will actually dish out money to get little kids in pumpkin outfits stoned.
Hey, if some crazy wants to pay for these expensive tricked out treats, then the Sheriff should kindly provide me some addresses – I’d be glad to get ’em out of the little hands of innocent children.
Those poor children.
I’m also imagining a world where marijuana is legal and, for whatever insane reason, that would mean that every citizen in California would suddenly feel obligated to toke up all the time in the most irresponsible manners possible – on the road, at the workplace and on school campuses.
There is some logic to what No on Prop. 19 backers are saying. There are plenty of qualms and loopholey-type occurrences that may arise out of the proposition.
But their disaster scenarios and predictions for utter havoc are out of hand.
Their agenda has gone from citing marijuana as a dangerous, harmful drug to mildly accepting the fact that there are benefits to legalization, leading to criticism of the proposition’s language instead. And now that they’re done with that, they’ve moved on to this Reefer Madness type bull.
Maybe it’s working. It doesn’t look like the initiative will pass, with the most recent Field Poll stating opposition at 49 percent.
After tomorrow, Prop. 19 may go “up in smoke”, perhaps just a mere “pipe dream” – and I might go nuts if I keep reading these widely used puns in news articles. But the issue of marijuana legalization certainly will not go away.
People need to get real. Stop supporting exaggerated, explosive claims. Stop creating doomsday scenarios.
If there is an idiotic nurse that wants to care for a patient while high, then yeah, she’s a dumbass and should be fired.
This event may occur, but it’s more likely to be an isolated incident. I question why responsible, jobholding citizens would suddenly feel the need to be high on the job. They could just as easily chug a bottle of Don Julio in the morning, drive to work and proceed with the workday all messed up, gulping forties on their lunch break.
But people don’t generally do that. It’s called personal responsibility.
Marijuana is misunderstood. Many of the most prominent backers of the No on Prop. 19 campaign – like the California Police Chief’s Association and Mothers Against Drunk Driving – haven’t smoked enough doobies to know what they’re talking about.
There’s a reason why the majority of voters that are for Prop. 19 are under age 40 and located in “greener” areas of California. It’s because they’ve experienced aspects of marijuana lifestyle and culture, and realized that the world goes on.
You’re not silly for voting no on Prop. 19 – but you’re severely misguided if your main reason for this vote is based on outlandish propaganda.
MAY YANG wishes there weren’t word limits on this thing. To continue the conversation, send an e-mail to mayyang@ucdavis.edu.
