Don’t Give Them More Reasons to Keep Marijuana Illegal

A story from the Boston Herald titled ‘Pot law leaves cops high & dry‘ caught my eye this morning. At first I thought this was to be another “cops are just pissy for no reason” story, but reading it gave me a different impression. One that is far more dangerous than my initial perception. The impression of regression.

Let me explain

Through this article the Boston Herald bullet-pointed several cases in which their decriminalization of marijuana has actually made a negative impact.

In Arlington, a public works employee was cited by the local police chief for smoking a pot pipe as he stood next to his town-issued tractor.

At bustling Park Street Station, a pair of nonchalant lovers out on the town openly lit up a joint and continued toking even after confronted by off-duty Milton Chief Richard Wells.

In East Boston, four teens spotted in a “smoke-filled vehicle” unabashedly told a cop they were “just smoking marijuana.”

A man caught near a Dorchester playground laughed when police said he faced a $100 fine – and then taunted the cops with an expletive-laced tirade.

Pro-legalization folk will read these and realize that these are few cases out of many, and we all know how the media like to grab onto juicy stories. The anti-legalization crowd will certainly use this as a base to fight for criminalization (or re-criminalization where applicable). This is to be expected. But there is another crowd that we don’t think of, that has far more power than either of the other 2. The people that haven’t decided.

Let me share this with you.

Indifference Is A Killer

As the owner of a business that offers services of a recurring type, you rely heavily on your current customer base. These are the people paying the bills, which in turn allows you to pay your employees, who will in turn accommodate those customers and gain new ones.

Most of your customer care employees will often share their joy when a happy client calls, and their disgust at the idea they may have to deal with an unhappy customer. But this thinking isn’t proper. Pissed or otherwise, those customers are communicating with you. These people are calling in to tell you what they think about your services, good or bad.

The people that don’t call, those are the ones I worry about. You see, it’s not so difficult to please an unhappy client. Sure, you may lose a few, but generally you don’t. But the people who don’t care either way; those people could leave at the drop of a hat giving you no understanding as to why. So, you do your best to communicate with as many of your current, past and potential clients as you can.

Remember, friends. Indifference has, on more than one occasion been the killer of companies. My point?

We Need To Speak To The Indifferent

Again, we know that the 2 major sides of the legalization argument will read such an article and contrive what they already have. But that third group; the group that hasn’t made up their mind. They may read this article and see it as a basis for their future reasoning.

This is why we need to be careful. The little decriminalization battle fought and won in small areas are great, but the real ‘war on drugs’ isn’t over. Actions like the ones stated in the article could set us back quite a bit.

The Battles of a War

There is a military strategy that doesn’t make sense when you first hear it, but becomes obvious once explained.

Let’s say you have forces on 2 fronts, and a reserve waiting for your orders. One front is being taken by your army with impecable ease, while the other is waining. Without consideration to what each front actually means; in this hypothetical situation, where do you send your reserves?

Most people say “obviously, to the front that we stand to lose.” This is incorrect. Sending forces to a losing battle may very well end in a complete loss of 2 of your groups, and the other battle hasn’t been secured just yet. Such thinking could equal a complete loss. Instead, you send your forces to the winning battle to ensure victory. This will leave your men alive to fight another day. Now you have 2, maybe three groups you may send to another battle.

I know, it took me a while to grasp it when my father explained it to me as well.

But that’s where we are. We are at a point where small battles are causing complacency, leading to losing battles in other areas. As a country, we need to stand together.

Just Play Along, Dammit

This has gotten a little off point, but I hope it helps to explain the reasoning I have when I say; we need to not let stories like this take root. Most people spend more than $100 on lunch per week. Yeah, you can smoke with a small fine now, but that doesn’t mean you get to shuck the law all together. Don’t give people a reason to re-think decriminalization.

The people in this story could have paid their fine and been on their way. This would show that there is still money coming into the local government (their main concern anyway) and that we as pro-legalization peoples are all too happy to oblige the laws as they come.

This Wouldn’t Even Be a Problem If…

I know what a lot of your are thinking (if you’ve actually made it this far into my often incoherent writing). You’re thinking “you know, if we just made it legal we wouldn’t have these problems.” And you’re correct. Sure, if it were legal we wouldn’t have to deal with this stuff all the time. But it’s not legal yet, and there’s only one thing we can do about that. Play the game. We have to accommodate the ignorant until we can bring the majority to the same page as we.

It sucks, but you have to get passed the “I was gonna clean my room until my mommy told me to” mentality. Just clean your damn room, pacify the people that need it, and fight the battles where we are winning. I say this because I am in Florida, and I will need all the forces I can get once you guys get your wins under your belt.

Oh, and just to show you that you aren’t alone in this thought, it seems that a poll by the Boston Herald conducted of 3,758 people shows that 71% feel that we should “just legalize pot and save us all the trouble.”

We will win, it’s just a matter of keeping our wits about us, and time.

And Now For Further B.S.

To round this article off with further propaganda bullshit, take a look at how this article ends. It seems that a child molester runs free because of marijuana decriminalization.

See, we already have plenty of crap to deal with. Don’t add to it with disrespectful behavior towards the authorities. Pay your damn fine, or smoke where you won’t be caught.