cannabisnews.com: Column: This Is Your Brain On Politics 





Column: This Is Your Brain On Politics 
Posted by FoM on January 28, 2000 at 07:18:09 PT
By Trevor Johnson, Daily Nebraskan
Source: U-WIRE
On Monday, the Iowa caucus gave us two front-running Presidential candidates for the New Hampshire primary in February. The two leaders chosen, George W. Bush and Al Gore, have both been elected to public office multiple times. Both have also taken an immense amount of criticism from the public -- Bush for his befuddling answers on foreign policy and Gore for his stale persona. 
They have one other thing in common: both have used illegal drugs (Bush, cocaine, and Gore, marijuana in Vietnam), and both could have been put in jail if they were caught. They join quite a few others. Twenty-five percent of the world's overall population has tried or uses marijuana. Of the nearly 287 million people in America, over 71 million of these people tried marijuana. Over the last four years, studies show that 41 to 48 percent of teens use or have experimented with marijuana. Coincidentally, there have been over 22 million marijuana arrests in the last 30 years. The number of arrests has increasingly climbed, and now there is an average of over 500,000 arrests per year. If Gore or Bush had been caught and convicted, they would not be eligible for the positions they are running for now. These high figures of American drug use are often cited by organizations, such as "Project For a Drug Free America" and D.A.R.E., to cause alarm among the people and for the government to gain support for "the war on drugs." The U.S. government spends billions of dollars trying to keep drugs out of the country each year. The amount of drug seizures in this country has gone up, but officials are not sure th they have made any progress because they "don't know how much is actually coming into the country." But, because half of the population's desire at one point or another to have marijuana in this country, the drug keeps coming in. And thus the people who are buying the marijuana are getting hit with a double-edged sword. Not only are they paying for the marijuana, but their taxes are paying to make sure the marijuana is not getting to them. Not to mention they are also paying for prisons that keep a high number of convicted drug users and dealers in jail. Perhaps they are making an investment in themselves if they ever get caught. Yet with billions of dollars being spent to keep marijuana out of the country and nearly half of America at one time or another wanting them in, there has not been a mass movement to change popular thinking on Drug Culture. Perhaps it's a good thing that America's children aren't told to get high after school, but it's still true that most of the population never receives any information on why people do use marijuana. Instead, we are told to "be smart, don't start," and we are shown commercials, such as the "This is your brain on drugs" advertisement. It is not until later as a public that we learn writers like Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman and others have experimented with drugs. In fact, the more we delve into the subject, the more we know that drug usage has influenced much of the writing, movies, architecture and art we know and love in today's society. Drug culture, though it involves such a high populace, is still perceived as an underworld that much of the time escapes the eye of the U.S. government. Many people still think of the average drug dealer as the man in the dark trench coat hiding behind the bushes, when in fact it is their neighbor, classmate, coworker or even church-goer. But even so, America as a whole wants to continue to shoot itself in the foot, and the majority wants to give way to the minority and disallow marijuana in this country. For the most part, they don't tolerate any pro-drug movement. Instead, beliefs, such as the gateway drug theory, (which even "Partnership for a Drug Free America" admits has no validity), are allowed to be spread to an uneducated audience, that is told to be ashamed of its own actions. Even Bush and Gore are condemning drugs themselves when both of them have experimented with them in the past, yet both think they are qualified for the highest office in this country, and most likely, one of them will be elected. But even though they condemn drug use, a known drug user will be in the President's office, and almost every other office in this country. Why doesn't anyone want to know this? Some statistics for this column were taken from the Web sites: http://www.potsmokers.com/ and http://www.drugfreeamerica.org/ (U-WIRE) LINCOLN, Neb.Published: January 27, 20000(C) 2000 Daily Nebraskan via U-WIRE Copyright © 1995-2000 Excite IncRelated Articles: Gore: Smoking or Being Dope - 1/27/2000http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread4499.shtmlA Note To Tennessean Readers About Gore Coverage - 1/25/2000http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread4472.shtmlOne Other Journalist Recalls Gore's Drug Use - 1/25/2000http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread4471.shtmlReports of Gore Pot Use Raise Complex Questions - 1/25/2000http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread4470.shtml 
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