Eight Feet Deep

A story on USA Today web from January caught my attention this afternoon, running an article about the 11 least likely states to legalize marijuana. I suppose what amazed me the most is that Texas wasn’t on the list.

The article, originally from 24/7 Wall St., based the list on a variety of factors from lack of medical marijuana laws to high penalties for possession as well as low usage rates by residents. The least likely are:

1.  Alabama
2.  Arkansas
3.  Georgia
4.  Idaho
5.  Indiana

   

6.  Kansas
7.  Oklahoma
8.  South Dakota
9.  Tennessee
10.  Utah
11.  Wyoming

The so-called “legalization” of marijuana in the U.S. is a fairly fluid situation. I use quotation marks for legalization because even though, the Obama administration has told some federal law enforcement to back off, the use of pot remains against federal law. The Office of National Drug Control Policy, part of the executive branch of government sums up the present situation:

“Since 1996, 23 states and Washington, DC have passed laws allowing smoked marijuana to be used for a variety of medical conditions. It is important to recognize that these state marijuana laws do not change the fact that using marijuana continues to be an offense under Federal law.  Nor do these state laws change the criteria or process for FDA approval of safe and effective medications.”

Bummer dude!

State legislatures are allowing different measures ranging from medical marijuana to recreational pot. The former includes cannabidiol which are products with trace amounts of the active ingredient of  pot known as THC. A very strict law regarding use of these products have been signed into law in Texas. But like some other states, the law is far away from recreational or even broader medical use statutes.

Still, one has to consider the small medicinal change in Texas drug law, it has come a long way, Baby.

During the 70s in my East Texas Pineywoods high school, we had an annual general assembly program that featured some four-to-five convicts who resided about an hour away in Huntsville. Sitting on stage in a semi-circle in the high school auditorium were the prisoners, wearing white uniforms and sporting burr haircuts. These incarcerated individuals came to testify. Mostly their testimony was “don’t do drugs.”

The “scared straight” message about drugs — mostly pot – from the prisoners had one point whether any of the kids-gone-bad bore deep merit. That was don’t get caught with marijuana. This was because simple marijuana possession of any amount in Texas — until the time of my graduation in 1974 — could earn one a felony conviction ranging from two years to life in prison. That was only beaten by China in severity, according to a Rolling Stone article about pot laws.

A high school friend had been busted less than a year before the law changed. Even though he had received probation he still carried a felony conviction until his death in an automobile accident the following year.

Today in Texas, a person caught with weed could be arrested and wind up for a maximum in jail for six months, and/or a $2,000 fine for less than two ounces of pot. Or the person could receive a ticket and the same punishment although many times the fine is not as severe as the maximum.

The pot laws in the U.S. are a smorgasbord of punishment. Only half-a-decade or so ago I said I would never see pot legal. I have been surprised with the almost dozen of states that have allowed pot use including the almost handful where recreational use is law.

Maybe why Texas is not in the list of least likely of states to adopt pot use laws is the reason why I am not discouraged that federal and other state laws will now change. Although the nation has turned right, and may see somewhat of a left turn, it might be we live in a nation of people who are otherwise law abiding but like to get stoned. I know many people who were and continue to be stoners among my Baby Boom peers. Many of those are conservative in their politics. That is encouraging for those who would like to see marijuana legal for both medical and recreational use. I won’t elaborate for now. Perhaps some time later, in the book version of eightfeetdeep.

 

 

Friends and neighbors, there is something certainly disturbing going on right now. It is scarier than Ted Cruz and Donald Trump combined. It seems toddlers are shooting their parents quite often.

This morning I read a news story that sounded familiar. It said “Mother shot and killed by her 2-year-old son.” I read the headline on story aggregator Google News. I had noticed for quite a while that some of my stories weren’t being refreshed. I often see articles two or three weeks old. I thought this was one of those articles.

It turns out that the story of the toddler shooting his mother Tuesday in Milwaukee was similar to a story I read last month. In that incident, a Florida woman who is known as a gun advocate was shot in the back with a .45-caliber pistol in early March.

The difference between the two stories was that the latest shooting proved fatal.

Patrice Price, 26, was reportedly driving a car belonging to her boyfriend who was a security guard. The child somehow got the weapon and pulled the trigger. In the Florida case, 31-year-old pro-gun activist Jamie Gilt told authorities that she had put the gun under the seat and the gun came out while towing a horse trailer with her  pickup. The toddler reportedly unbuckled his seat, then picked up the gun and fired it through through the seat in which his mother was driving. The shooting came just hours after Gilt wrote on Facebook: “My 4-year-old gets jacked up to target shoot,” the Washington Post reported. ­­

Just how often this type of accidental shooting occurs is not really clear. I saw one report say there were 41 incidents in which small kids shot a parent or someone else from October 2015 until present. Or maybe it was 41 this year. The fact it has happened twice in the past two months might spur those people who conceal carry to carry it better, at least in their automobile.

I first saw this happening a couple of times to be funny, not ha-ha, but rather in an ironic way. But parents aren’t being targeted by toddlers, rather children are the ones getting killed in more numbers than should ever happen. I have written here before that I was almost shot once as a “baby,” according to the family story. I have no memory of this, at least in my conscious recall. I think that is a good thing, I’m not sure. My brother John may have been 12 or 13 when he took a shotgun from a rack while visiting our cousins’ home and pulled the trigger. The shot went through the wall and missed me by inches, as the story goes. John died in 2014.

My nieces like to hear the stories of us five boys in our younger day. I really wasn’t around when all the mischief  was created as there was eight years between me and my next older brother, Robert, who passed away about two months before John. But during a family gathering the last time all five of us were together and were in relatively good health, we sat around talking and listening to the stories of our childhood. I brought up the story of my near hit and John’s near miss. I had always joked with him about it but he got serious this time and recalled how scared he and everyone was. One of my brothers remembered our mother saying at that time that she had never heard a sound as good to “hear that baby crying.”

I grew up knowing how to shoot. I like to shoot targets or beer cans. I don’t want to see guns gone. And I don’t believe we will ever see them outlawed, at least in my lifetime. Like I have said many times about total gun control, that genie’s out of the bottle. But, and I have argued with my friends about this, that some sanity is needed in gun policy. I don’t expect NRA to be of any help. I don’t know what it will take for some self-control to keep people from accidentally shooting others, whether at home or in a crowd when someone tries to be Dirty Harry. Maybe I am wishing the impossible. Then again, I was almost a goner from accidental shooting. I can’t imagine how my family would have survived such a tragedy. But we, I, was spared.

The primary in five northeastern states are ho-hum no matter how cable news try to put lipstick on a pig

The pig is GOP candidate Donald Trump. Should I call Donald Trump a pig? Why not. Trump calls his opponents insulting names or engages in personal insults, such as his remarks yesterday that the eating habits of John Kaisch were disgusting. If Trump wants to talk disgusting, its definitely a case of Donald pot calling the Kaisch black. One will not have to search far and wide to find instances of The Donald engaging in the disgusting. There are so many instances that I will not take the time to direct readers to a link.

Likewise, one must need look far and wide to find a story that gives a chance to the alliance between Cruz and Kaisch. That is probably true but such a partnership working would undercut the talking head class and their Trump fixation.

Still, the networks play this “Super Tuesday” — every other Tuesday primary also was given such a moniker by cablet outlets — which is actually less than super.

As Washington Post columnist Philip Bump asserts about the remaining Republican candidates, “the three are not thoroughbreds, they are sloths.”

The race has been and, even more so today, remains about process. The primary elections seem even less important than early in the campaigns. Delegates are the name of the game and there is no given that even delegates will be of that much importance, especially if Trump wins the delegate count.

Donald Trump has shown lately through his speeches and actions that his campaign is slowly running off the tracks. His alleged campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was reduced in status after the accusations that he assaulted a reporert at a Trump rally. Paul Manafort had been picked to supposedly manage the GOP convention in Cleveland  this summer, yet Politico reports that Lewandowski was back in the saddle after attempts to make Trump look “presidential” were rejected by the candidate. CNN veteran political analyst John King says he has seen campaigns shuffle personnel during the years he has covered politics, dating back to his time as the Associated Press political correspondent.

Who knows what will really happen? I don’t expect we will know anything for certain until a Republican candidate is anointed in Cleveland.

Oh and as far as the Democratic contest, Hillary hasn’t had any real challenge as of late. Bernie Sanders and his campaign has seemingly run out of steam. Maybe he is just selling a vision at this point.  I am no Hillary fan but I don’t want a Republican to win the general election in November. I hope Sanders will soon feel he has sold that vision and help the Democrat ticket.