Oh sure, there's still plenty of kind bud running around. Kind bud (also known as ganja, indoor, chronic, dank and stank) is a higher quality weed. It is potent and pungent and can be grown by anyone with 500 dollars and an oversized closet. Since kind bud doesn't have to make that perilous trek across the border, there's plenty of it. The problem is, I smoke Mexican weed.

Now, admitting that one smokes Mexican (also known as mecky, mexy, shake or schwag) when one lives in Ocean Beach is tantamount to social suicide. OB is primarily occupied by pot snobs. I can't tell you how many times I've pulled out my trusty film canister of shwag during one of our back alley pow-wows behind the bar, only to watch my potsnobbian friends recoil in disgust as if the canister was filled with infected monkey entrails.

"How can you smoke that shit!?" they howl in disbelief.

And I always have to tell them, "Not that it's anything to you, but I smoke mecky because it suits my needs better." For one thing, Mexican is cheaper. It's easily half the price. More importantly, it is a weaker strain of marijuana than its indoor cousins. Mecky has half as much THC and for me that's a good thing. I need my weed to be weaker. I'm a marijuana lightweight. When I smoke kind bud, I get overstoned. Then I can't do anything right: I can't talk, I can't read, I can't sleep, I can't drive, I can't screw, I can't even write when I get that fumigated. It took me over an hour to write what you've just read because I'm overstoned on chronic at the moment which really sucks because I'm behind deadline.

Check this out: since THC is the active ingredient in pot, and there's more THC in kind bud than there is in mecky, and the war on drugs is forcing me to smoke kind bud – then the war on drugs is making me smoke more drugs than I want to.

Isn't that a gas? It'd be like blocking the distribution of light cigarettes thus making people smoke Marlboro reds.

I know, I know, some of you are saying that marijuana is illegal and I shouldn't be smoking it at all. Well call me an anarchist, call me a lefty loon, call me a non-supporter-of-the-troops-type person but I do not recognize the right of any person, group or government to determine what I do with my body so long as what I do with it doesn't harm anyone else.

Some people argue that consuming narcotics does harm somebody else. They say people are dying over the stuff: border agents, police, and politicians on both sides of the border are losing their lives fighting the war on drugs and are therefore victims of my drug consumption. They say it's the high demand that creates America's drug problem and I couldn't disagree more: There's a high demand for milk, but we don't have milk wars at the border. Nobody's smuggling cows in the wheel wells of U-Hauls, no shootouts at the border with heavily armed milkmen. No, the problem isn't demand, the problem is the prohibition of something that is in demand, and it is that prohibition, actually, that is illegal and immoral as it forsakes my constitutional right to life liberty and the pursuit of, you know, fun cool shit to do. Don't misunderstand. I feel terrible for anyone who dies in the crossfire of this ridiculous war on drugs but I absolutely do not feel responsible.

You know what I wonder sometimes? I wonder if there are any Border Patrol Officers who realize the war on drugs is bullshit. I sure hope so. Sometimes I like to imagine there is this one lone agent who believes prohibition is a colossal mistake. In my mind, he's one of these activist types, prone to mouth off his opinions in the locker room, or the patrol car, or in the morning meetings. He gets into heated arguments with his pro-prohibition colleagues about how if we legalize drugs in this country we could use the tax money to make a better country: Some of it could be allocated to rebuild libraries and repair city infrastructure, some of it could go toward upgrading the drug awareness campaign, and the rest could go to improved rehabilitation and treatment. Then this free-thinking warrior border agent hero of my mind would tell his gung-ho drug-hating buddies how decriminalizing drugs would ultimately untie their hands. How all those wasted hours searching for drugs could have been better spent searching for something, you know, something that truly threatens society, something like – hmm, well let me think about it for a second, oh yeah I know, how about they use the extra time searching for guys with bombs who want to blow up people and buildings with them?

"How about that positive side effect to legalizing drugs?" he would snort.

Oh well, such dreams only lead to disappointment - but thanks for trying Free Thinking Warrior Border Agent Hero. I know we're a long way from drug legalization but in the meantime, I was thinking, maybe you could lay off the brickweed busts for a bit? All you have to do is let a little get through so this way I won't have to smoke more drugs and go broke doing it. So I don't walk around overstoned all the time. So I can make a deadline. Come on man, can you give a brutha a break?

EJD
03/28/07