This Would Have Never Happened With Pot

Man, the Oxycontin clusterbungle just gets worse and worse. After years of hooking the poor, the pained and (Rush Limbaugh and Rudy Guiliani, pick up the white phone) serious pains in the ass, the insanely addictive but nevertheless wholly legitimized narcotic has killed hundreds and made thousands of doctors across America look like the pushers they are. Billions of dollars down the drain, another indelible blot on Pharma. Throw in some recent guilty pleas from OxyCrack peddlers Purdue Frederick and you have a seriously doped-up mea culpa.

Now, can someone remind me why pot is still illegal?

Seriously. I mean it. I'll take all comers, academic, polemic and otherwise. Post it here. Hit me at Morphizm, if you like. I seriously can't wait to read the dementia writ large. It should be a hoot.

Every time I read some Pharma trash like this, I can't help but rewind Peter Tosh's aptly named legalization classic "Bush Doctor" in my mind. And not just the beginning where Tosh lampoons the Surgeon General's warning on cigarettes, but rather the part that counsels: "It can build up your failing economy [and] eliminate the slavish mentality."

And what are OxyCrack addicts but slaves to highs delivered by pushers trafficking in beatdowns and billions, in pursuit of profit margins at the expense of health? If killing your pain by dying altogether isn't the dumbest prescription ever written, then I don't know what is. As for Tosh's crack on the economy of drug addiction, Purdue is shelling out $634.5 million in fines, to along with the billions already diseased by the doomed enterprise, and that's probably not even crunching the numbers found in OxyCrack's black market.

Can someone remind me why growing your own pot, or buying some from the increasing number of dispensaries around the world, is a less suitable economic alternative? For the Big Bang's sake, I can buy an eigth of weed in Los Angeles for what it costs to buy a single Oxycrack tablet found on the Gold Coast black market. Why shouldn't I be able to, when the option I am offered by my doctor -- who's probably been lunching on Pharma's dime as they stock him or her up with OxyCrack pens, clocks and free samples -- is more or less equivalent to what I'd get if I just jumped out the window? It makes no sense at all.

Well, it does, but that's when the haters start rolling their eyes. Criminalizing cannabis, as it is known in scientific circles, is a serious industry, from the bonanzas for over-the-counter drugs like OxyCrack to the police and prison industries designed and dedicated to imprisoning potheads and dealers all the way down to funding the stoopid science of the ONDCP and onward. Let's not be mistaken, the War on Drugs, like the equally stoopid War on Terror, is just another economic takeover disguised as a moral campaign. It's lunacy. And it is probably the worst drug we'll ever take, aiming for a high -- um, I mean victory -- that is not only unachievable but abstract to the point of irrelevance. That is, if it didn't cost so much money and so many lives.

So yeah, get to it. Remind me why pot is illegal, and why Oxycrack had a massive pharmaceutical, medical and political machine helping it peddle addiction and death to rednecks and radio hotshots. I'll make sure to have a huge joint waiting, because hilarity is always more hilarious when you're high. When you're dead? Not so much.