Pubdate: Sun, 17 Jul 2005
Source: High Point Enterprise (NC)
Copyright: 2005 High Point Enterprise
Contact:  http://www.hpe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/576
Author: Steve Bryant
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

DEALERS COME DRESSED TO KILL

I bought a new suit yesterday. Navy blue, 48 extra long. I had been 
wishfully hoping that the one I got back in 1998 would last me until my 
unavoidable future date with J.C. Green and Sons, but alas, trying to cram 
250 pounds into a space meant for 225 had become intolerable.

I don't necessarily have to wear one at work, but even if I did wear one, I 
doubt that it would fool too many. I had even managed to find a church that 
doesn't seem to mind when I show up (infrequently) without wearing one.

I did buy a tuxedo awhile back, just for special occasions such as 
accepting awards, but as you would probably guess, it's still in an 
unopened box. Come to think of it, about the only times I wear a suit 
nowadays is for weddings or funerals.

For weddings, I usually have a little while to get ready. But funerals 
always seem to have a nasty habit of popping up at the most unexpected, and 
inconvenient, times. So far this year, I've been to one wedding and three 
funerals. Humm. That sounds very familiar.

Anyway, I went to a funeral just a few days ago. It was due to the 
senseless death from a drug overdose of yet another young man who was 
really just starting out on life's journey.

Even though I had watched the boy grow up as a friend of my son, I didn't 
know what to say to his grieving parents because I had grown up in a 
different world.

For example, when my senior class took our graduation trip to the beach, 
someone suggested that we try smoking "grass." We pulled up some of the 
front yard, twisted the tobacco out of a Taryington cigarette (charcoal 
filter!) and refilled it with lawn. After puffing away in frustration for 
the longest time, another classmate said he had heard that banana peels 
would do it.

But tales from Bumpkinville aside, I'm not exactly speaking from 
inexperience here because I found out later on, all right.

In fact, hypocrite, is what some who are reading this column might be 
calling me about now. I've surely earned that label a few times in my life. 
But thank the good Lord that I was allowed to be a child, when I was a child.

And thanks, that I was able to seek my way in life without looking at the 
world through a foggy haze. I'm thankful that pond scum weren't waiting 
around the corner every afternoon to push their "candy" on me when I got 
out of school.

Now, some of you might think that I'm being a little too rigid here, but in 
fact, I'm quite liberal on this subject.

You see, it's because I want the national print media to keep on publishing 
pictures of over-the-hill hippies, out in California, puffing away on their 
"medicinal" marijuana and telling me how debilitated they are without it.

And I want this newspaper to keep on printing the coordinated Your View 
column letters from around the country that tell me how important it is for 
us to legalize recreational drugs to insure our "freedoms."

Because if they stop doing that, I'm afraid that I might get distracted 
while I'm pulling the labels off of this new suit ... and forget, just how 
important legalizing drug use really is.

Steve Bryant owns and operates a business in High Point.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom