PrintJuly 8, 2010
Pot Democrats versus Soda Pop Americans
You've seen the news, no doubt. San Francisco's Democratic Mayor Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order banning sugared soft drinks from city-property vending machines. At the same time, though, San Francisco's Enlightened Ones are giving medical marijuana shops guidelines and recipes for all sorts of pot-laced goodies. The message: sugared up is bad; stoned is okay.
No one should kid themselves. Medical marijuana is just an interim step to full blown legal marijuana. The vampires masquerading as politicians in San Francisco and throughout California are revenue starved, since they can't kick their addictions to big government. Under the guise of compassion for the sick, pot is being shot into the mainstream via hemp shops with red crosses painted on them. Legal marijuana is a mighty big potential tax revenue stream.
In the left's upside down world, a kid quaffing a Coke needs to have the bottle pried from his sticky hands. A sugared-up kid might do something really crazy, like run, jump or fidget -- or just develop a pot-belly.
But we know that marijuana, having reached something of mythic proportions among liberals and the counterculture, is the laudanum of our day -- it's good for anything that ails you.
Of course, soda pop is bad for adults, too. Drinking an Orange Crush -- or even two -- and getting behind the wheel of a car makes a driver a road risk. Not so pot. Getting high off of one toke and climbing into your handy-dandy Smart Car should pose no risk to other drivers and pedestrians. Then, again, Americans shouldn't be driving. Walking and biking are just fine.
Long term health risks from regular marijuana use? No such thing. Pot legalization advocates are quick to point out that many studies to date haven't proven that regular marijuana use has any deleterious impact on health. But wasn't the same said about tobacco use as recently as the 1950s?
Regardless the propaganda, there are studies underway that indicate that regular pot-smoking could cause respiratory illness, for instance. Not as many carcinogens in pot smoke as tobacco smoke, say pot advocates? How many carcinogens, and in what combination, constitute the threshold for respiratory risk? Doesn't simple commonsense suggest that drawing any sort of smoke into one's lungs over a prolong period could cause lung damage?
But for the left, health concerns really miss the point. You see, Coca Cola and Pepsi represent big, bad capitalist enterprises. These two large soft drink makers' products are woven into the fabric of mainstream American culture. American culture is bourgeois, therefore evil, and needs to be destroyed.
Fact is, most Americans living somewhere between Harvard Yard and Berkley don't consider an icy-cold A&W Root Beer as a threat to health and safety on the order of sweetly named pot types like "B-52," "California Skunk," "Durban Poison," and "Haze."
Haze might well be an apt description for the state wherein the left resides. It's into the haze that Pot Democrats want to drag soda-loving Americans. San Francisco's medical marijuana ploy is just the beginning.
