the road ends here

the road ends here, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

it wasn't the most exciting championship game, but the good guys won. frasor makes me nervous, the heels fall on the floor drawing charges too often, and hansbrough may be a robot in a family of robots, but other than that, they were the perfect team. ellington and danny green and and ed davis and ty lawson with his low center of gravity were so much fun to watch all season.

Fish Dinners Sale flyer in the mailbox

Fish Dinners Sale flyer in the mailbox, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i'm sad to say i didn't order anything.

also wondering what the health department would think of this.

broken toes

broken toes, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

people are funny.

this photo i took of someone's toes in a cast is the second-most clicked-on of all 3000 of my flickr photos by a mile. (the first most clicked-on is this of unc-asheville's giant basketball player kenny george last year).

last week i got email from mike52fun about it:

Leg Cast

Hi,

Was that your foot in the cast? If so, did you enjoy the attention you received while wearing it?

Have a GREAT day,
Mike

to which i replied:

Re: Leg Cast
hi MIke, no it wasn't my foot, i was at an outdoor concert & it was the foot of a woman sitting in front of me. i'm very glad to have never broken my foot or ankle or leg.

then he wrote back:

Re: Leg Cast


Thank-you!

Would you like to wear a cast for fun for a couple of days and see how much attention you would receive?

Have a GREAT Weekend,
Mike

i countered:

Re: Leg Cast
i don't think so, since i do all i can to AVOID attention. i'm more of an observer than a performer. and i like to walk instead of hobble.

and finally:

Re: Leg Cast


Thank-you for your reply!

I wish you much success!

Mike

so i got that going for me.

The Sound of Singing (3rd Grade)

The Sound of Singing (3rd Grade), originally uploaded by skippy haha.

newark

newark , originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i took this photo sunday morning at newark airport thinking about all the sensory overload presented there, and just noticed the woman in the vest is the very same woman who sneezed on me twice after our flight landed in asheville and we were waiting at the gate to retrieve luggage.

i guess the new thing with sneezing is to NOT contain your germs with your hands, thinking you'll soon touch things with your germy fingers and spread your sick. instead you're supposed to sneeze into your elbow and contain the germs there, since you hardly touch the inside of your elbow to anything or anyone else.

there were about a dozen other passengers tightly clustered at the gate waiting for the bag cart to meet us. she was less than a foot away from me. when she sneezed, she turned her head toward me and sort of raised her bent arm to shoulder level and sneezed, containing none of her germs in her elbow, instead spraying me with them.

i sighed loudly and rolled my eyes and turned my head away and covered my mouth with my scarf to breathe.

within 20 seconds she did it again.

i said, 'are you kidding me?!?' and walked out of the room. she mumbled something like 'oh i'm sorry.'

if you're going to sneeze into your elbow, please put your elbow up to your mouth, not 6 inches in front of your face as you sneeze all over people around you.

i now have swollen glands and blame her.

orange peel update

i got a sincere, thoughtful response from Dana, manager at the orange peel, after my bitching about the recent invasive bag search i encountered there at the ozomatli show:

Hi Heather,

I'm sorry to hear that you had an uncomfortable experience with our door staff at the Ozomatli show. I actually took the night off to attend the show and, you're right, it was great. We really try to encourage the staff to be considerate of both the customer's experience at a show and the security of the club. It is not an easy job and sometimes, in efforts to protect the club, a staff member can go overboard. We have reminded all of the staff that the thoroughness of pat downs/searches, unless otherwise dictated by the band's management, do not need to be quite so extreme and we think we have come up with a policy that is clear and noninvasive.
... I appreciate you emailing us as we are always trying to improve and constructive criticism is always welcome.

Sincerely,
Dana Redfield
The Orange Peel, Manager

i am happy with this response and plan to go back in the next couple months, and will bring my bag like i normally do and report back on the depth of search.

henry at the bank

henry at the bank, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

the people at the bank love my little brother henry. they give him treats so he loves them, too.

look homeward angel

look homeward angel, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

taking a trip to the northeast. hooray public transportation! hooray for no snow! hooray for blueberry muffins! hooray for furry brothers!

silent letters be gone

to make spelling match pronunciation, i think it should be changed to wensday instead of Wednesday and febuary instead of February.

the best of friends

brothers, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

like a band of gypsies we go down the highway

Please do not mix olives. and wings.

do not mix olives and wings, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

it's been a few months since i changed my brita water filter and there are carbon bits floating around the inside, so i went to ingles to get some more.

i checked the hardware aisle.

no filters.

i checked the bottled water aisle.

no filters.

i checked the baking aisle.

no filters.

i checked the jewish food aisle where i swear i'd bought them before.

no filters.

fine, you win, i'll ask a manager stocking shelves. i knew he was a manager from his white button down shirt and tie. he told me they no longer stock water filters.

he said there wasn't enough room for water filters anymore after the last 'reset.'

this store is huge. tens of thousands of square feet. it has a full pharmacy inside the store. it has a full deli inside the store. it has a freestanding starbucks inside the store. it has a full movie rental store inside the store.

they must've had to make room for this disgusting salad wing and olive bar and could no longer spare 1 square foot of shelf space for brita filters.

LAME.

APPALACHIA sung to the tune of LOCHLOOSA written by JJ Grey

this girl is 11 years old. 11 YEARS OLD! are you fucking kidding me?


http://www.almirafawn.com/

happy spring

from your neighborhood rodent

hellos and goodbyes

badminton yoga, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

it's now been 2 years since nacho, holden and i moved to asheville from sun diego. i had high expectations and they've been exceeded. it's a most accepting, creative place, aesthetically pleasing, with plenty of opportunity for recreation, full of relatively aware unfake people. i love living here.

yesterday was a goodbye party for friends who are moving to tennessee.
in the words of billy joel:
so many faces in and out of my life,
some will last, some will just be now and then.
life is a series of hellos and goodbyes,
i'm afraid it's time for goodbye again.

facedown on the sidewalk

facedown on sidewalk, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

it looked like a white rectangle, but was really the world's cutest baby picture

ozomatli + chali 2na

ozomatli + chali 2na, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i went to the orange peel last night and the show was great.

we got there about 10 minutes before the band went on and the place was already pretty full. i showed my ticket to the guy at the door. i showed my license to the guy on the stool inside the door. then a girl behind him about my age said she had to look in my bag. it was sideways across my body so i started to open it up to show her the insides. she said no take it off and put it on the table. so i did. she asked if i needed to go put anything back in the car, any drugs or alcohol. i said no. she proceeded to open, unzip and unvelcro every pocket, took out my wallet, opened it, opened the change purse inside my wallet, pulled out my chapstick, tampons, keys, physically handled every single thing in the bag. i felt completely violated, especially since she asked if there was anything in there and i said no. i have been to many festivals and rock and jamband shows at big arenas with tight security and have never been searched so invasively as at the orange peel last night. it left a rancid impression and in this recession where i'm already cutting way back on shows i see, to avoid further hassle, privacy violations, and excessive searches, i will not be back to the orange peel unless it's a dire emergency (ie tea leaf green is playing).

heart

heart, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

you can chop down the tree but can't break its heart

snowstorm preschool 1980

snowstorm 1983, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

The snow is blowing
all the stars to pieces
in the snowstorm.
The house has snow
all over it!

smiling thumbs up

smiling thumbs up, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

when i look at this door i see a smiley face giving me the thumbs up.
spring has sprung in north carolina, at least for the last few days. daffodils and crocuses are out. i went for a walk in flip flops for the first time since probably august and halfway through the skin on the top of my feet was ripped so badly i walked the last mile and a half barefoot. every single person i passed on the way said 'nice day for going barefoot.' which is true, but it's not too nice walking on asphalt and concrete barefoot. the skin on the bottom of my feet is also ripped now. but a week ago there were 4 inches of snow on the ground and i was wearing eskimo boots, so i am not complaining.

common sense

an arachnophobic with a basement full of black widow spiders should not leave the tops of cherry tomatoes laying on the counter.

really

if a chimp eats my face do not resuscitate.

Roy Head - Treat Her Right!

you never see rockstars of today doing tumblesaults off the stage.

brilliant invention

this guy in nebraska made a bong out of a duct taped shoebox and put his cat in there to try to calm it down. i see he has scratches on his neck in the mugshot that could be evidence the cat needed to chill.

"This cat was just dazed," Sgt. Andy Stebbing said. "She was on the front seat of the cop car, wrapped in a blanket, and never moved all the way to the humane society."

full story here.

ici

ici, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

ici, very ici

snowdog

snowdog, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

we got a couple of inches of snow yesterday. the world's friendliest polar bear cub seems to like this.

buddies

buddies, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

we should all be so lucky

medical ethical dilemma

i know i'm relatively anti-social to begin with, but i don't enjoy talking to people who are sick with highly communicable diseases. am i alone in this? does everybody else just go out and socialize while they're sick? do they feel guilty for spreading their germs? do they worry that other sick people will germ over them while their immune system is suppressed? i feel a cold coming on with swollen glands and itchy ears and have a party i really want to go to tonight. i cleaned my ears with qtips dipped in rubbing alcohol & i'm drinking hot lemon water and have not been sick yet this year and really, really want to keep up the streak. is it rude to go to a party wearing a bandana around your face? or a surgical mask?

.

neville brothers

neville brothers, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i saw the neville brothers and dr. john play this week. after dr. john opened, they put the curtain down & when the nevilles came out they put the curtain up and lead falsetto singer aaron neville's microphone stand was stuck to the curtain so it went flying up about 25 feet to the ceiling and came crashing down and broke on stage. he just played the tambourine and danced around for the first song 'fire on the bayou' until the roadie could bring him out another one. the show was mardi grasalicious.

golden scorpion honey

golden scorpion honey, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

there was a small golden scorpion on the honey jar today. i tried to drown it with rubbing alcohol but it tried to escape so i popped it with a teaspoon.
click the photo for a closeup of the mythical golden scorpion.

(anybody know what it really is? mini carolina wolf spider?)

get it quick

things that look so minor and cute at first can turn into crusty stubborn messes if you let them sit there. for instance tomato seeds. they're simple to clean when they spill but an ugly bitch to scrape off once they're dried on.

nothing's perfect

nothing's perfect, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

i hate goodbyes

goodbye, originally uploaded by vintagevantage.

mateo is leaving vintage vantage today after running thangs for five years. here he is during his weekend of fun with the inimitable kid D. there's a tribute to him on the site today here. i made a tribute for him when i started this blog 3 years ago here. he and his lady are traveling the world for the next three months, and i wish them nothing but the best of everything.

pets must be leashed

pets must be leashed, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

or else nothing

max patch

max patch, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

360 views of the blue ridge and great smoky mountains from up there. they keep it tree-free by mowing and controlled burns. it's phenomenal.

sky heart

sky heart, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

have a lucky friday 13 and a loveful valentine's day, if you pay attention to those kinds of things. i'm going to a cabin in hot springs, where i hear the springs are not really hot. they're calling for rain all weekend, but hopefully will be nice enough to hike around up there. i'm going to try to make shrimp pierre for the first time. i've enjoyed the hell out of it many times over the years but never attempted to make it. looks easy enough.

Autistic Basketball Manager's 20 Point Game

this is 3 years old but still tear-inducing

just be enthusiastic

way to go jason mcelway

go heels

i love this man




and these men

broadway nest

in terms of bird real estate, this is an exciting spot. you have to deal with the gas fumes, but every night there's a headlight/taillight laser show going on.

makes a great funeral gift

got a request through eBay today from a girl whose dad just died to make 5 Jif honey peanut butter stash safes for her siblings and her because their dad loved honey peanut butter so much and she wants to give them all a memorial present. i said absolutely no problem.

torched christmas trees

brian fire, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

went to a party in the woods where we burned a couple hundred christmas trees. the heat was beautiful.

1 love

1 love, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

irie bob marley day everybody.

let's get together and feel alright! free michael phelps!

snow dogs!

snow dogs!, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

we finally got a little more than a dusting in asheville. on the one morning of the winter that i needed to be at the doctor. the office was open and less than a mile away and i made it driving there and back with no trouble, and everything is fine. it's pretty amazing how there are no sanding or salting trucks going by, the streets are a big frozen mess. hot chocolate time!

thanks Dgold

http://dgold.info/radio/webcast2009/music409


in the first few seconds of Obama Inauguration Tunes Hour 4 my friend Dgold says hello to skippy haha and vintage vantage and proceeds to play an outright incredibly eclectic mix of music picked thoughtfully and specially to commemorate obama's inauguration day.


SET FOUR: Yes We Can Can, For What It’s Worth, Being A President Is Like Riding A Tiger, Blue Hawaiian, Changes > Without Hope You Cannot Start The Day, Chicago, Change Of Pace, Done Change My Way Of Living, Already Free, Grandma’s Hands, This Land Is Your Land, Funky President, Big Brother, All The Black And White Children, Change Gonna Come, Change My Ways Part 2


Artists "Obama Inauguration Tunes Hour 4"
The Pointer Sisters, Mavis Staples, Maserati, Pavement, Yes, Sufjan Stevens, Albert King, Taj Mahal, The Derek Trucks Band, Bill Withers, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Bettye LaVette, Otis Redding, Galactic


in his words,

This is not a political radio show, it is a music radio show that is current with culture and news events around the world.

As an American music radio show based on the campus of the University Of Arkansas, I am broadcasting a collection of songs of hope for the world, music of change for the listeners, as Barack Obama becomes President of the United States on this historic day.

thanks for all the honest tunes, Dgold.

this would suck

SC skydive instructor dies; 1st-timer lands safely
The Associated Press
Posted: Sunday, Feb. 01, 2009

CHESTER, S.C. Authorities say a skydive instructor who was sharing a parachute with a first-time jumper apparently died of a heart attack in the air.

Officials say the instructor was identified as George C. "Chip" Steele of Sumter, S.C.

The first-time jumper was able to parachute to the ground safely Saturday in Chester County. He tried to revive the 49-year-old instructor after they had landed, but the coroner's office says it was too late.

They were skydiving in a tandem jump, where instructors are strapped to the backs of their students.

The first-time jumper was described as an active member of the military in his 30s, but his name was not immediately released.

Steele worked for Skydive Carolina and had made thousands of jumps over a lengthy career.

i jumped out of a plane in henderson north carolina in 1996. it was weird. it was a tandem jump like this one, with a guy wearing sweatpants strapped to my back. you do the math. as miserable as it was i'm glad he didn't have a heart attack.

orange peel

orange peel, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

does this appeal to your prurient interest?

waiting for phish tix

waiting for phish tix, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

people have been camped outside the asheville civic center for a couple days now, waiting for phish tickets to go on sale at 10 AM today. they have a frisbee golf goal set up. i'm going to try to get tickets online, i'd love to see the show but i'm not going to camp on concrete in freezing temperatures for it. if i get shut out of tickets, i have faith that i know enough people who will be coming from out of town for it that one of them will need a place to stay and will be able to give me a ticket. this is probably delusional.

throw paint at a tree

throw paint at a tree, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

or pepto bismol vomit

repainting

repainting, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

we've been wondering will we ever know the truth, what it's like washing windows when you know that there are pigeons on the roof

as fast as they can paint this wall, there's graffiti on it

burn yer $

tea leaf green

tea leaf green, originally uploaded by skippy haha.

everybody in this picture is STOKED

go see live music

tea leaf green is rolling right now

War on Drugs: The Price Tag

from http://www.culture11.com/article/36438

War on Drugs: The Price Tag

America can’t afford marijuana prohibition – it’s a matter of dollars and sense.

By Anita Bartholomew, January 14, 2009



With our economy going to pot, President-elect Obama has promised a “top-to-bottom audit to eliminate spending for programs that don’t work.” So, here’s a sane, simple proposal to save the country billions of dollars a year: end the war on marijuana users.

This failed and counter-productive program is an assault on people who pose virtually no threat to themselves or anyone else, certainly no more than that all-American "Joe Sixpack" revered in our recent presidential election.

Yet, getting caught with a few seeds or trace marijuana residue on a pipe is enough in some jurisdictions to trigger an arrest. Most who favor continuing the war assume that law enforcement focuses on sweeping up kingpins and members of cartels. But, here’s a sobering statistic. Of the 872,000 arrests in 2007 for marijuana-related offenses, almost 90 percent were for simple possession of the dried vegetation in question. The typical arrestee is younger than 30. Think college-age kid caught lighting up a joint. Now, multiply that by 775,000 — that’s where a significant chunk of your drug war dollars are going.

The price of deploying an army of local, state and federal cops, prosecutors and guards to arrest, try and imprison the perpetrators of this non-scourge? Using data from 2000, Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimated it as $7.7 billion per year while a 2007 study, by public policy expert Jon Gettman, figured it closer to $10.7 billion per year.

Most of that money is eaten up by law enforcement according to Miron, with $2.94 billion going to prosecution costs in 2000, and less than half a billion toward incarceration.

Add in the revenue we’d eventually gain if marijuana were regulated and taxed like alcohol and tobacco (from $6.2 billion to as much as $31.1 billion per year), and you’re talking real money.

EX-COPS EXPRESS REGRETS ABOUT A FAILED WAR

David Doddridge took pride in his work for most of his 21-year career with the LAPD. But when, five years before his retirement, he got transferred into narcotics, he began to feel he was doing more harm than good.

Cops see the collateral damage done by the drug war, costs that don’t show up on anyone’s budget analysis and are paid, not just by those arrested for the high crime of preferring a doobie to a Bud Lite, but by their families: The father whose car is confiscated when junior gets pulled over by an officer with a nose for burnt herb. The daughter who tries to buy medical marijuana – because it’s the only medicine that relieves her parent’s chemotherapy-induced nausea – and gets arrested in the process. The children who get shuffled from foster home to foster home while mom serves time.

“One of the first things that struck me as a narcotics officer was the tremendous amount of damage we were doing to the social structure – homes, families, children, parents,” says Doddridge. “I look back and still see the faces of the people I arrested and threw in jail.”

He recalls a young mother he busted who had been working her way through college. “Her boyfriend left her and she was trying to make a better life for herself and raise two children at the same time. All of that was gone now. All of it was gone.

“I got to thinking, what are we doing? I’d been thinking it for a while but that just made it worse.”

When I ask him to give me the positive side of prohibition, Doddridge’s usually soft, thoughtful voice betrays anger. “It’s really helped out the drug cartels. It’s created lots of new jobs, building new prisons, hiring new guards.” Doddridge also decries how, under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the government has enacted laws that ignore the fourth amendment’s prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure.

And there are practical considerations even the fiercest anti-drug crusader should take into account. When law enforcement agencies allocate more time, money and officers to drug task forces, those resources aren’t available to fight crimes against people and property.

“The homicide clearance rate today is less than it was in 1950,” says Doddridge. “Today we have all the DNA and all the electronic stuff and CSI and all these other people. But we can’t clear as many because serious investigative resources, that could go into clearing homicides, rapes, robberies and other things are now being diverted into this war on drugs.”

After leaving the LAPD, Doddridge joined Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), the only drug reform organization representing those in law enforcement. LEAP, founded by five former police officers in 2002, now has 10,000 members, including current and former judges, cops, DEA officers, prosecutors, and others. By giving the law enforcement perspective in media interviews, in talks to groups such as Rotary, Lions, and Kiwanis clubs, and testifying before legislatures, LEAP has helped to bring about incremental changes in some state and local laws, such as decriminalization of possession of small amounts of pot. It’s one battalion in the army of reform organizations that includes NORML, the Marijuana Policy Project, the Drug Policy Alliance, and others.

Now one of LEAP’s spokespeople, Doddridge says he expected at first to get “a lot of hoots and howls” when he spoke to an audience. Instead, almost everyone has been receptive to his message.

“It’s almost like they’re waking up from a dream. You can just see them, click, click click,” he says, as the arguments against prohibition break through preconceptions.

Like Doddridge, Earl Barnett is a retired law enforcement officer – he was on a force of about 500 in Greenville, South Carolina – whose experiences soured him on the drug war. In his view, law enforcement needs to get out of the business of policing drug users. “The fact of the matter is, the large majority of the people who use drugs are not a threat to the community.”

Barnett, who is also a spokesperson for LEAP, points to Prohibition, the U.S.’s last failed attempt at keeping people from choosing their own intoxicants. “They preached that we would turn into a nation of alcoholic zombies if we repealed Prohibition.”

Today’s prohibitionists warn that marijuana legalization would lead to a nation of drug-addled zombies.

Barnett believes we should take the lessons of history to heart and feels frustrated that we haven’t as yet. “We are still enthralled with politicians who preach fear in this country. The only thing our country has done very well in the war on drugs is that we have created such fear, we’re reluctant to consider any alternative.

“There has to be a different way because what we’ve been doing has absolutely squandered our resources. And for what?”

PROHIBITION THEN AND NOW

On January 16,1920, the eve of Prohibition, the flamboyant evangelist Billy Sunday (himself, a reformed drinker), staged a mock funeral for John Barleycorn, complete with a grief-stricken Satan marching behind the casket. Sunday preached that demon rum was at the root of all crime and, without it, there would be no more need for jails. To an audience of 10,000 celebrants, Sunday proclaimed, “We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corn cribs.”

This belief, shared by many Prohibitionists, prompted some towns to close their jails and sell off the buildings.

Drinking and crime did take a dive for a couple of years but neither ended. By 1923, people were drinking more than they had in 1918 to 1919, prior to the passage of the 18th amendment that banned alcohol. Homicide rates spiked.

Prohibition had created a distribution vacuum that organized crime quickly filled, operating much like today’s drug cartels.

With the double-whammy of the Great Depression hitting at the same time Prohibition-associated crime was burning a hole in the law enforcement budget, voters clamored for repeal.

So will a deep recession lead us to reconsider pot prohibition? Jeffrey A. Miron, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at Harvard, authored one of the many studies that calculated the billions we’d save each year if we stopped prosecuting marijuana users. In June 2005, more than 500 economists, including the late Milton Friedman, signed a letter in support of the study, urging repeal of marijuana prohibition.

Miron isn’t sanguine about the war on weed ending any time soon, but he believes that, in a free society, the government has no business protecting us from ourselves — especially when it makes arbitrary choices about which risks it’s going to prevent us from taking.

“Any argument one could make for keeping marijuana illegal would apply at least as strongly for tobacco and alcohol and many other things which carry risks,” says Miron, “driving on a highway, downhill skiing, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, you name it.”

THE POLITICS OF POT

Why do we spend billions per year on enforcement, judicial costs, and imprisonment of people whose only crime is to prefer a relatively mild, non-government-sanctioned intoxicant over more addictive, more health-damaging government-approved ones? Why is the government so intent on protecting me from me – and you from you? Isn’t its rightful role to protect us from outside threats against our persons and property?

Drug czar John Walters heads the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), a federal agency that establishes drug war objectives and priorities throughout the U.S. I made several attempts to reach Walters, or a representative, so I could ask these and other questions, but was unsuccessful.

So, we’re left to public statements made by Walters and others in his office, such as those from a press conference in September, when Walters was campaigning against a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana in the state of Michigan, which has since passed. Walters claimed that marijuana is “dangerous” an “addictive substance” and that proponents of legalizing marijuana for medical use are promoting “poisoning on a wider scale.” A blog entry from the office of the drug czar suggests that marijuana use leads to schizophrenia.

How dangerous is pot, really? There are no records of anyone having died from smoking marijuana, ever, nor has anyone overdosed on it, or been poisoned by it, unlike over-the-counter remedies such as, say, aspirin and similar pain relievers, which kill approximately 7,600 people per year. Medical researchers tell us that the potential for marijuana to be habit-forming is equal to or less than the habit-forming potential of caffeine. But we haven’t outlawed coffee, tea or chocolate. In the seemingly endless search for some justification for the war on weed, researchers have looked for a cause-and-effect connection between marijuana and schizophrenia.

And they did discover that those with schizophrenia are more likely to smoke marijuana than are other people. However, they also found that those with schizophrenia are even more likely to drink alcohol. No one’s suggesting we again ban alcohol.

When all else fails, the drug czar’s fallback argument is that marijuana is a “gateway drug” that leads young people to try more potent stuff. The Institute of Medicine is a non-government body commissioned by the drug czar’s office in 1999 to weigh the value of marijuana as medicine. It found that “most drug users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana” and that “marijuana is not the most common, and is rarely the first, ‘gateway’ to illicit drug use.” In other words, the drug czar’s last, best argument had been debunked by his own office before Walters took over.

Ordinary people are getting wise to the realities and pot won’t be our boogey man forever just as demon rum has lost its ability to instill fear. As it was before the repeal of alcohol Prohibition, average Americans of all stripes are ahead of the politicians on the learning curve. A Zogby poll of 4,730 people nationwide, conducted in September 2008, found that 76 percent surveyed believed the war on drugs was a failure. And 54.4 percent overall believed that the solution to drug abuse should not be law enforcement-related, but either education/treatment, legalization of some drugs, or ending the war on drugs all together.

Twenty-one states have now decriminalized marijuana possession for personal use, medical use or both, most often by ballot initiative — demonstrating that a majority of voters favored relaxing the law. On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, Massachusetts’s voters became the latest to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and Michigan voters legalized medical marijuana. Both measures passed with more than 60 percent approval.

But as long as there are any criminal penalties attached to marijuana use, we will continue enriching the violent cartels and gangs that grow, harvest and distribute pot. They thrive for the same reasons the Al Capones of the alcohol Prohibition era thrived: prohibition throws all the business their way.

As long as marijuana is illegal, we’ll still be directing billions to enforcement, prosecution and incarceration. And we still won’t realize the revenues that regulation and taxation can bring.

We could use those lost billions right now. Estimates of the combined savings from legalizing marijuana, and revenues from taxing it like alcohol or tobacco, range from $13.94 to $41.8 billion per year. That’s enough to pay for all or most of President-elect Obama’s proposed ten-year, $150 billion alternative energy investment. Or it could contribute roughly one-fifth to one-half of the $75 billion per year estimated cost of Obama’s proposal to extend health insurance to all.

We can’t know yet where an Obama administration will take us but, Candidate Obama gave a few clues about how President Obama may look upon the war on weed. Obama and his spokespeople have said that he would respect the medical marijuana laws passed by local and state governments and end the Clinton and Bush era DEA raids on medical marijuana providers.

It’s less clear how receptive he’ll be to either legalization or decriminalization. Although he backtracked once he became a presidential candidate, Obama agreed with decriminalization in 2004. And, like the majority of Americans polled by Zogby, Obama has called the drug war an utter failure.

It’s a start. Alcohol Prohibition didn’t end all at once. At the dawn of Prohibition, doctors lobbied to retain the ability to prescribe liquor for medicinal purposes. Toward the end, low alcohol content beer was re-introduced. And with economic collapse and bootleg alcohol gang violence out of control, the U.S. reached a tipping point; the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th.

It’s time to reassess marijuana prohibition with clear minds, the way that our ancestors eventually viewed repeal of alcohol Prohibition, to get past the fear-based and moralistic misinformation. Do we really want to keep spending insane amounts of our dwindling government funds on tracking down, arresting and imprisoning the hundreds of thousands of hapless Harolds and Kumars who then can no longer contribute to our faltering economy by overeating at White Castle? Is this where we want to focus our law enforcement resources when we’re entering a deep recession that’s likely to produce an increase in property crime?

Going back to President-elect Obama’s promise to “eliminate spending for programs that don’t work,” it’s clear that the war on marijuana users hasn’t worked. It’s not just a failure, it’s a disgrace, on every level, and it’s time to end it. Not only to save money or to stop punishing non-criminals, but to fulfill a promise made long ago, about inalienable American rights to liberty, the most basic of which is, quite obviously, the freedom to do what you choose with your own body in the privacy of your own home.


[Editor's note: This is one of three pieces Culture11 is publishing on the War on Drugs. See Radley Balko's piece on collateral damage in the drug war here, and David Fredosso on the case against legalization here. And see David and Radley debate their respective pieces here.]