Goofy marijuana news out of Jacksonville, Florida:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents served federal search and seizure warrants this week at nine area retail stores and seized 8,000 items of drug paraphernalia with an approximate retail value of $250,000.
First of all, when the hell did that agency start being called “ICE” for shorthand? Talk about hilarious. Oh wait, here we go:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established in March 2003 as the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. ICE is comprised of four integrated divisions that form a 21st century law enforcement agency with broad responsibilities for a number of key homeland security priorities.
Anyway, there’s one part of this article that really gets me:
Special agents seized bongs, “roach†clips, grinders, crack pipes and marijuana pipes. Many of the items seized were made to lure children. Some of the items depicted well-known cartoon characters such as the Tasmanian Devil, Tweety Bird and the California Raisin.
“This week’s seizure sends the clear message that ICE will use all of its investigative resources to identify stores that sell a terrible lie to children,†said Frank Figueroa, special agent-in-charge in Tampa. “There’s no doubt that these items were made to make drug use attractive to kids and we simply will not tolerate this type of activity in our community.â€
Here’s an image of one of the water pipes mentioned in this article.
I have to really ask whether such things are really designed to appeal to kids. I don’t know any kids who have a hundred dollars to spend on a ceramic statue of a California Raisin that you can smoke out of. But then, maybe I’m just out of touch with today’s kids. Either way though, that seems like a bit of a crock of shit to accuse these shops of trying to entice kids into them. Let’s get serious: teenagers don’t start smoking pot because of the goddamned Tasmanian Devil. If you don’t want these kind of shops in your community that’s one thing, but let’s just be straight about what the reasons are.
In any event, I personally never even smoked pot before I was maybe around 20 years old. But then, I didn’t really start drinking till then either. I realize that’s kind of a late start for most people though. This is one of those areas that I’m curious to hear about how old other people were when they started experimenting with mind-altering substances. Post anonymously if you don’t want your weirdo kids to find out your secret drug habits!
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42 Comments
I was so obnoxiously, vehemently anti-weed till about the age of 26 that I’m lucky I even have any friends left. When I go home for Xmas, old buddies of mine always remark on how they can’t believe who they’re getting stoned with. Not me! Heavens no.
Another friend of mine who was in the Navy and I had a conversation once about why the military doesn’t really give a shit about amphetamines and alcohol, but is defacto fascist in its response to marijuana use. He explained how easy it is while in port to get hookers and alcohol. But remarked that what everybody off the boat really needed was to get high. Becuase once they did, they’d look about their ranks (all stoned) and say: “Anybody ever thought about why we’re gonna get back on the boat?”
If marijuana were legalized the military would have to be delegalized. You couldn’t have a bunch of trained killers finding themselves. That would be the answer to the greatest riddle of all! Why they hate our freedom.
Oh and, navy dudes are some of the most clever and hilarious people I have ever met. At least the one’s I know and have met.
Ha, I don’t just think we’re talking about the military here, either!
When I have kids some day they will be forbidden to smoke pot until they have they are out of college,as it interferes with neurological maturation.
I didn’t start smoking pot until i was 25 myself - no lie.
OTOH i have been high every day for the last 10 years and it has affected me not a whit. Sweet job at a fortune 500 company, homeowner, taxpayer, married, the whole shebang.
Truly tha herb is one of god’s most wonderful creations! I think I’ll go get stoned right now!
i started smoking herbs at 16. and probably drinking around then too. i dont really remember. lol.
i would be a fucking mess without herb. drinking on the other hand i could do without. but i spend so much time in clubs its really hard to not drink some. especially since they put all the no smoking laws into effect…
and i really need to stop smoking cigarettes. and that i didnt start until i was like 20.
and the only other drug ive done really is acid. and that only like 5 times when i was about 17.
fucked me up. im still trippin.
i want to eat some mushrooms soon. i just gotta get my head together abit more first.
and i drink too much coffee.
one
human?
Jaysis, I feel like the profligate. I started smoking pot at 13 and had probably logged in 10- 15 lsd trips by the time I was 16, and many more combined, mescaline, mushroom trips afterwards. I also taught myself to read at 3 1/2 and was reading at high school level by the time I was 8. I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead at 13 along with Aldous Huxley and Tim Leary. Psilocybin Cubensis grows in my garden, it isnt cultivated it’s a gift from the universe. My son smokes pot, he is 15, for me to forbid him would terribly hypocritical. I require him to be responsible and respectful of these natural substances. I dont feel neurologically impaired in the slightest. I don’t smoke cigarettes and do not drink alcohol. I must make a point that I don’t regret a moment , well except maybe once on mushrooms at a Clapton concert, some smart arse decided to lift the portable toilet I was in with front end loader about 8ft off the ground. Slosh Slosh , oh dear.
Didn’t drink until I was 22. Didn’t try pot until then, either. Pot was amazing at first and I really did want to use it in a sacrimental or mind-exploratory way, inspired by reading Cosmic Trigger. After a few years, I realized that I had not, on balance, really done that, instead it ended up bein’ that sit around, listen to music and watch TV with the volume off while conversating with my roommate thing. Which is a good, social thing and has value, but it began to become a too predictable routine. (Plus that it usually took me a day or two to be completely un-spaced out after a night of smoking.) So I’ve given it a rest over the last year, more or less. Even if I’m not toking and then meditating or doing some ritual, I wanna give it back that special feel–which is a ritual in and of itself, I’d say. This past weekend was one such time: I smoked with some lovely people I’d never met before out in some small New Jersey town (first time in Jersey, too). Great conversation, ending with everyone sitting in a hot tub in the backyard while torrential rain came down on us. Now, that’s special, man. (Welcome to Jersey!)
‘Course, that’s just me. Other people are built differently with different sensibilities.
BTW my son has a 3.5 gpa, and already did a junior internship at Ringling School of Art, one of the most prestigious art schools in the US. He’s decided he will attend Tampa Institute of Art and major in animation and perhaps do some post grad work in film making. He made his first claymation short film at 9, and plays and is lead vocalist in an indie band. I can’t stress enough that these substances can be a boon to creativity when properly respected.
I’m on board, Gina. I actually really wish I’d tried pot when I was younger. It would have really helped me loosen up and set my priorities straight at an earlier age. But then, I would have needed the proper introduction to it as well - which I never had. It’s not like I was sitting there actively turning it down as a kid. Nobody ever even offered me the chance until college.
Actually, I’m pretty surprised to hear that so many other people got started so late in life. I always feel like the odd man out on stuff like this…
My experience was peer initiated, I hung out with people who were much much older than I. My family tends to mature physically very early, that combined with my voracious reading probably made me appear much older than I was. My peer groups consisted of artists, musicians, and surfer dudes, not technology or engineering types. I was attractive jailbait with an ivy league vocabulary. My son understands my philosophy and respect for these substances, but trust me he has his slacker moments. When I asked about his Hallowe’en plans he told me he was going to going to dress up Hunter S Thompson. We are very close, not in a creepy way, but in a way that he can ask me anything and know and trust he will get a thoughtful truthful answer. and that includes entheogen use. I can be expected to kick his arse when he doesnt keep his room clean too.
Sorta off topic - but weren’t the California Raisans created as pr coverup in respose to a book that was coming out exposing the unhealthy chemicals sprayed on the little shriveled fruit? I think i read that in “Toxic Sludge is Good For You” but I may have it mixed up.
Anyway, it would be funny that those same little dancing raisians would move onto trying to lure kids into smoking pot.
Oh yeah, I should probably finally admit that the whole reason I started smoking pot in the first place was because my best friend had this gigantic bong in the shape of a California raisin. Before that, I was all like, “Pot? Whatever!” But when I saw that smiling mirthful ceramic replica of a dried corporate fruit sponsor, my resistance just shriveled up and the rest is history!
SIKE!
Thanks for the toxic raisins tip Garrett… I’ll look into it.
Sad fact. Canada was actually very strong on the whole drug war thing. Then, some prankster left a california raisin bong on our border. He didn’t even try to “sell us a lie”. Instead, he just said we were chicken if we didn’t try. And that is how Canada succumbed to reefer madness.
Is there a child alive who even knows what a california raisin is?
I swear to God they grow drug agents in a big vat…that’s the only wya they can get cops so ignorant of culture.
Pick this up sometime
SLEEP - Jerusalem
Also I want to check out Hakim Bey’s recent anthology “Orgies of the Hemp Eaters.”
Haeresis: is that vat hydroponic?
Here’s an interesting question, when did we stop initiating our children? Indigenous people spiritually initiate their youth as a right of passage. Have we dropped the ball on our children by not initiating them spiritually to follow some belief system besides the almighty God Mammon? I’m not just speaking of entheogen use or smoking pot, but the same sort of esoterica we ourselves are postulating.
Nah, they use special manure.
They busted Chong for Christ’s sake. What do you expect.
I can’t even find weed any more.
I started at age 15. Typically I would go spend a couple hours in the library doing my school work, and smoke a bone on the way home, as a little treat for myself. I was varsity cross country and swimming, and passed 6 AP classes and tests, shit I had a year of college credit by the time I was graduated from high school.
I’ve dosed over 130 times.
Only regret: cocaine.
-tc
syseng@msn.com
Gina, I was “initiated” with a baptism ceremony. It may have been an initiation into a pathological or heretical strain of Xtianity (hard to say) but such ceremonies do still go on.
I should say that said initiation was completely exoteric and, while the “divine presence” was felt, it seems like it was more of an “after-glow” effect due to the degradation of the Tradition.
Ten years? That’s a lot of funyons.
Sorry, target of opportunity.
There was a UK study that came out showing that checking your email and answering the phone at work impaired productivity and concentration more than smoking marijuana beforehand.
It was also revealed that study was a marketing gimmick paid for by HP or some other company who was trying to promote an organization software package. I have a link about it somewhere.
Here we go:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005...13/email-makes-you-stupider-than-pot/
Actually, this site has more info than mine:
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2005/04/does_email_really_re.html
There are belief systems that still do initiate their children, I know this is prevalent in afro-carribean religions n the US, it may exist in other immigrnat cultures as well.
I think society suffers terrible from kids not having anything to beleive in but whatever popular culture tells them is cool. Gangs may be a substitute for this as well.
I wrote kind of a long meandering post about our culture’s lack of initiation rituals and the phenomena of spontaneous initiation, in regards to aliens, and occult stuff. Some of it holds up more than others looking back on it, but its interesting to combine it all together
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005...liens-and-occult-initatition-rituals/
My point regarding initiation vs baptism within an organised environment is the experiential aspect, mostly Prunesquallori. When I speak of initiation within indigenous peoples or even wild spontaneous spiritual initiation I mean direct contact with divine. Though I know these experiences can’t be custom ordered, young men and women in indigenous tribes are set on a path towards the goal of divine contact.
In observing Western or Christian initiatory experiences direct contact with the divine seems all too rare. In RCatholicism it is infants who are baptized, in most fundie churches it is people who have accepted a crucified Christ as a redemptive feature, both of these strike me as simply empty ritual or at the very most the acceptance within a proscribed hierarchy. You see i have this crazy theory that youth experiment with drugs precisely because they are looking for this enigmatic transcending union, jmho.
I don’t think that’s a crazy theory at all. It makes perfect sense. I don’t just think it’s about contact with the divine though - I think it has to do with instinctively trying to reconfigure the brain to assume an adult role within society. I think the point of most “primitive” initiation rituals is that your child brain is re-imprinted with a new set of rules and a supporting story-system to turn you into an adult.
This is accomplished, in a way, with kids breaking away from the domain of their parents (ie, childhood) by experimenting with drugs. Unfortunately, the ritual container this imprinting occurs in is one outside of the world of adults. When kids do drugs now, they don’t become adults so much as they become teenagers, quasi-adults in a state of limbo, where their bodies and minds beg to be treated like adults, but end up still be treated as kids on many levels.
Now, I don’t have kids myself, but if and when I do, I’ve wondered about this a lot: giving them proper initiation rituals at the right age to help them along psychologically and spiritually. I’ve heard stories from friends about the first times they got drunk or high was with their parents. There’s something about that which makes a lot of sense to me.
Sounds totally right on to me.
The Brain of the Chickenhawk
I like the basic sentiment here, but it’s fairly inaccurate in that George W. Bush and many others DID go through these rituals. It’s called Skull & Bones. It’s a ritual death and rebirth designed to re-imprint you to complete loyalty to the group and your role therein.
Oh, no, I agree one hundred percent. Modern rituals are but the echoes of genuine initiatory rituals (and require extremely tortured chains of reasoning to justify them
), but that of course does not preclude genuine mystical experiences that spontaneously arise in followers of “degraded” traditions. Any divine influence I felt was, I’m sure, a purely spontaneous manifestation.
I’ve never had the slightest interest in any stimulants, but it was an entheogenic (mushroom) experience that got me to take the esoteric and mystic facets of religion seriously.
After a genuinely “cosmic” trip, I don’t think anyone can pretend any longer to ignore the very real presence of “supernatural” or nonsensory phenomena. Seriously. “gnosis” is such that it is truly unspeakable and supremely undeniable by those who experience it.
Tim: Skull and Bones and such are counter-initiatiatory.
I think Jesus advice that you will “know them by their fruits” is an adequate discriminator between the simulacrum of initiation and the genuine article.
I’m reminded of how Tolkien described Sauron’s creations, he was jealous of the genuine and pure elves and such, and created his abominations of orcs and trolls, in a twisted parody.
For those who “know” (or are at least hip
), it’s obvious how such societies mirror the true symbols of tradition, but twist them around to appeal to the lower self. The “elect” of Tradition seldom wield political power, and never in the way these guys do; their eliteness not is due to their material deeds, but to spiritual ones.
I don’t think it’s a simulation or a counter-initiation at all. Or if it is, then so what? I think what I said about re-imprinting somebody for a new cultural role stands up regardless of whether its the Freemasons, Skull & Bones, Catholic Confirmation, etc.
It seems like the distinction you’re after might be better served by asking what the social role of initiation is, versus the spiritual importance of it.
Also, not having any first hand experience of Skull & Bones, I’m not going to try and decide for them whether their ceremonies have any validity socially or spiritually. I imagine though that the bond it creates among its members is an extremely strong one. That’s about the only conclusion I’m prepared to come to.
Speaking of counter-initiation, I realize this is a really complex issue, so I started a conversation about it in the forum. Let’s take the debate there
http://www.timboucher.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=252
Goddamnit, that was one of my favorites. Well, what about the study about weed making you drive safer, the one that Getting It covered back in the good old days (i.e., the previous administration)?
Dead right. That original post is a worthwhile read.
You know, I came to this realization the other day: when I was a kid, I spent a lot of time trying get away from all that stupid kid shit because I didn’t see how it would help me once I entered the adult world where I would have responsiblities and the rights that corresponded with them. Well, here I am, and goddamn, I’ve realized there is no adult world, I’ve still got bad skin, and I never got my rites, neither. The clothes and the wallets change but everyone is whiny and sexually insecure and trying to get their hair just like some celebrity’s and still after peer approval. It speaks volumes for our society that rites of passage include being able to buy your own cigarettes and booze. The girl at the bar’s t-shirt reads: “Driving at 16 Fucking at 18 Drinking at 21! Kappa Delta 4Ever!”
Remember the fifties, how every smart person on the planet experimented with self-improvement through LSD? Normal doses back then were usually ten times higher than today’s street doses. This is just me shooting from the hip here, but I’m wondering, whether this is a massive social control mechanism. Most people I know think that real drugs, the ones that’ll carpetbomb your tiny little doors of perception, are “for kids”–after all, they did acid three or four times as a kid and it “makes you paranoid.” All the tools of initiation have been reversed, and given to children who don’t know how to use them, but denied to adults, thereby making the “adult” populace deprived.
Sorry, I missed the deadline.
I was anti-drug until age 18. I’m glad I didn’t do any before then, and I will tell my kids the same.
Nowadays, kids are bombarded with quite a paradox: being forced to grow up fast socially while at the same time being babied more than they ever have been at home. Not every home is like this, but I’d say on the average this description fits the modern American family very well.
I think kids’ brains are still forming in their teens, and when they hit 18 they should be allowed to go hog-wild and smoke whatever they want to smoke. Sure, some kids start at age 12 and are fine afterwards, but what about the kids who become total dropouts because of the early exposure?
If anything, the reason why bongs have cartoon characters on them is because of NOSTALGIA. How many Sponge Bob bongs are there? I’m sure there are some– Sponge Bob is popular with adults as well as kids– but when was the last time a California Raisin cartoon was on the air?
This post sounds stoned, and ironically I am sober. I just got over being sick…
I know there’s physiological evidence to say that the brain stops forming at a certain time, but I’ll be fucked if I’ve hit that wall yet (25). I wonder if in a way, this whole thing about the brain development turning off is sort of a cultural shorthand giving people permission to stop developing personally at a socially acceptable age?
That’s it right there I think.
You mean these things?
Nah, I usually just have a cup of tea and a smoke or something. Or maybe some Snyder’s of hanover pretzels with some sharp cheddar and a nice coca-cola on ice. Or peanut butter on french bread. Oh wait there’s some leftover chinese takeout form last night, damnit we gotta buy a microwave one of these days…
Supposedly it stops forming when they turn 23 or so
that’s a great question…
I’ll post that to the forum also…
Woah! Crazy good insight!
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[...] or a “stoner.” Another good example is the classic “head shop” which sells drug-related paraphernalia, alongside rock & roll artifacts, Bob Marley & Pink Floyd posters, black lights etc. Drug [...]