D'uh

Smoking strong pot daily increases psychosis risk, study finds

No kidding.

That this headline is self evident isn't news. Nor is it that people who were campaigning for the legalization of one more mind numbing drug in a society that's drugging itself into a stupor ignored this, and no doubt will deny it.

Oh well, not to fear, sooner or later the class actions and individual suits will begin, and we benighted benefactors of all social folly will profit.  And then the world, or at least the profits, will be as they should be.

2019 Wyoming Legislature. . and two more bills head to the Governor's desk. And another tax bill dies.

The bill to remove certain considerations from County's and vest them with the School Facilities Commission has passed the legislature and is on its way to Governor Gordon's desk.  It'll be interesting to see what he does with it.

The bill, as we've noted here before, came about as a plan by a Freiss backed private school in Teton County ran afoul of Teton County's building limitation size.  This bill would take such considerations away from counties and vest them with the School Facilities commissions, but it would also stand on its head the local control principal that generally the GOP likes.  If this consideration can be taken away from counties, others can be as well, and there's no guaranty that future administrations will necessarily be friendly to generally conservative interests.  I wonder if Gordon might veto the bill. If he does, it doesn't appear to have enough support for a veto override.

We'll know soon.

And a bill legalizing hemp farming on the state level, which does nothing to legalize it at the Federal level, has passed.  If Gordon signs it, prospective hemp farmers will still require a license from the Federal government, which is at least theoretically fairly restrictive.

At the same time, the proposed lodging tax died.

Lodging taxes have generally been well received by Wyomingites as, the argument goes, we don't pay them.

Well, we do a bit, but the way it works does give rise to that logic.  Various counties impose the tax, and as people rarely stay in hotels in their own counties, you're taxing visitors, which we are usually okay with.

Not this year, apparently. The proposal to raise the limit on the lodging tax, just like the big box retailer income tax, bit the dust.  We've read a lot about government in Wyoming hurting for money in recent years, but the legislature is clearly unwilling, this year, to take it on in the form of alternatives to the severance tax.

February 13, 1919. No love for alcohol

The big Wyoming news on this Valentine's Day Eve was the passage of a "Dry Bill" that limited the production of alcohol to beverages with no more than 1% of the stuff in them.

This has been noted before here, but the curious thing about this bill is that it was wholly redundant.  It was known at the time that the Federal government was going to pass its own bill to bring the provisions of the 18th Amendment into force. So why was a state bill necessary? Well, it really wasn't.

Or maybe it wasn't.  A modern analogy might be the bills regarding marijuana, which remains illegal under Federal law.  Many states prohibited it, and still do, under state law.  The Federal law remains in full force and effect for marijuana which technically, in legal terms, makes all state efforts to repeal its illegality, which date back to the early 1970s, moot.  However, in recent years the Federal Government has chosen not to enforce the law, and states have legalized it under state law.  There's nothing to preclude the Federal government from enforcing its own laws again other than that it would be unpopular.

Something similar, but not identical, occurred with alcohol.  The Prohibition movement was successful in making it illegal under the laws of numerous states before the 18th Amendment became law.  Even running right up to that states were passing anti alcohol laws right and left, and as can be seen, some passed them even after Prohibition came to the U.S. Constitution.  But that meant than when the 18th Amendment was repealed those same states, i.e., most of them, had to figure out how to deal with the ban under their own laws.  Wyoming chose to step out of Prohibition slowly over a term of years.

To bring this current, in recent years there's been efforts in Wyoming to have Wyoming follow the smoky trail laid down by weedy Colorado, and to allow marijuana for some purposes.  If it did, that would certainly be the first step to being a general legalization under state law.  As people have become unaware that it remains illegal under the Federal law, that would be regarded as a general legalization, and indeed my prediction is that at some point in the future when the Democrats control both houses of Congress, the Federal law will be repealed.

All of that is, in my view, a tragedy as Americans clearly don't need anything more to dull their whits chemically than they already have.  While I'm not a teetotaler, and I think passing the 18th Amendment in general was a foolish thing to do, it's a shame that once it came it was reversed as society would have been better off without alcohol quite clearly.  In terms of public health, Prohibition was a success and likewise, the legalization of marijuana will be a disaster.  About the only consolation that can be made of it is that, in my view, within a decade it'll prove to be such a public health threat that lawyers will be advertising class action law suits against weed companies for whatever long lasting health effects, and it will have some, that its proven to have.  It'll vest into American society like tobacco, something that we know is really bad for us, but people use anyway, and then they file suit against companies that produce it based on the fact that they turn out to be surprised that its really bad for you.

In other 1919 news, a big blizzard was in the region.

Geez, in weedy Denver this was even an issue?

Heck, with people hanging around stoned, how could they not do this?

DENVER -- Starting in January, the rules surrounding alcohol in Denver’s parks are likely to change.On Wednesday evening, Denver’s Parks and Recreation advisory board passed a recommendation making revisions to the alcohol policy.Currently, people are only allowed to consume 3.2 percent alcohol-by-volume beer in Denver parks.The new rules would allow park patrons to possess and consume full-strength beer in cups or cans. No glass containers, including bottles or growlers, would be allowed.

Panem et Circenses?

(Note. I started this entry prior to Jeff Sessions announcing that he's allowing the various U.S. Attorneys leeway whether to prosecute Federal laws in regard to marijuana or not, so this wasn't a reaction to Sessions announcement, although I do plan to post on that topic.)

The United States has approximately 45,000 homeless people.

Of that tragic figure, 26,000 of them live in Los Angeles.

That's right, over half of the nation's homeless live in a single city in California.  Expanded out logically, as we should do, this means well over half of the nation's homeless live in the state of California.  Homeless people live, of course, everywhere. And there's more than one explanation, I suppose, for why half of the nation's homeless live in one warm state. . . but there's no good reason why over half of the nation's homeless live in one single Californian city.

This figure, by the way, has climbed dramatically in recent years, but it stretches back at least over both of the recent administrations. . .so I don't want to hear "it's all Trump's fault" or "it'a all Obama's fault".  I'm not sure whose fault it is, and its probably a lot of people's fault.  Having said that, out of a country of over 325,000,000 people, about 45,000 isn't actually as many as I would have expected. . . not that its a good figure.

Whatever the reason for that figure is, it pretty much disqualifies California from constantly lecturing the rest of the country on anything.  Indeed, California, for that reason alone, should qualify as a failed state.  If there was  a way to revoke a state's statehood, like there was once a way to revoke a dominion's status in the British Empire, California would deserve it.  And no, I'm not kidding.  With the state as messed up as it is, it would make more sense to simply revoke its statehood and return it to territory status, but for one thing.  There's no good reason to believe that the Federal Government would do a much better job at it.  Oh well.

But that does mean that California's politicians probably ought to stick to local topics.  California more messed up now than it has ever been, and it needs to fix that.  Advertisements on television about how nifty it is, in order to draw tourists, don't cut it.

Of course California would likely point out that it may be on the receiving end of the homeless, rather than the creation end. And that would almost certainly be true.  In that case, the US is creating the problem and California merely enduring it.  There's no doubt there's something to that.

Anyhow, the one thing that California definitely doesn't really need right now it so go down the same road as Stoned Colorado and make a bad situation worse, but it's going to.

Colorado, following the oilfield slump of the 1980s, saw Denver, its capitol, go from Big Dump to Super Dump.  However, some clever urban planning based on downtown renewal centered around Coors Stadium managed to pull it back out of that status, much to their credit.

Then Colorado legalized weed and the once hip and cool district down by the river became a Stoner tent city.  Denver stoners will deny it, but the city is receding back into a dump, although this time its a Stinking Stoner Dump.

Clearly, California, which already has so many troubles that it defies description, needs to follow the lyrics of the old Bob Dylan song, "Everyone Must Get Stoned".

The thesis is no doubt that California, the Tarnished Golden State, must be on the forefront of liberty and freedom. . . unless it involves certain constitutional rights in which case it must the in the forefront of retrogression. And the money will be flowing in.

But the practical effect is a lot of desperate people, a fair number of whom are already addicts, are going to be much worse off. And that's not a good thing at all.

Monday At The Bar: The Lawyer, the Addict A high-powered Silicon Valley attorney dies. His ex-wife investigates, and finds a web of drug abuse in his profession

A New York Times article that may be a bit of a shocker for people outside the profession of law:

The Lawyer, the Addict

A high-powered Silicon Valley attorney dies. His ex-wife
investigates, and finds a web of drug abuse in his profession

Indeed, I ran across this comment in regards to it:

Did anyone else that read this article get freaked out? Not with the drug problem, but how someone can get so lost in their work?

So posts some special snowflake who is a law student.Surprised that somebody can get that lost in their work?  Lost in their work is the lawyers norm.

For most practicing lawyers, no matter what they do, not a day goes by where they don't think about their work.  And for many of them the assumption by people that they knew that they're some sort of alternative species that does nothing but think about the law anyhow, something like Homo Sapiens Lex, is so strong that somebody will bring it up no matter what.  I've been asked legal questions by people I know in locations as diverse as sporting shows and church.  I've been called at every hour of the day and every day of the week.  

Which is why, in part, there's "drug abuse in [the] profession", particularly if we consider alcohol to be a drug, which of course it is.

Alcohol, drug abuse, and addictive and destructive behaviors of all sorts of types, are rampant in the law.  I don't know if they've always been.  I suspect that they have not been to the current extent, but I also suspect that it's always been some sort of problem.  The "drunk lawyer" is a stereotype actually, and shows up in portrayals of lawyers fairly routinely.  The assisting lawyer in Anatomy of a Murder, is an aged alcoholic whom it is implied was brilliant but who fell into the bottle due to his work.  The protagonist in The Verdict is a dedicated alcoholic.  Interestingly, and perhaps saying something about the nature of their profession, alcoholic doctors is also a common theme in legal dramas.

I've never met an alcoholic doctor.  Physicians are pretty clean living in my observation, but I have seen alcohol and drugs take their toll in the legal world.  I frankly think that it's because a lot of lawyers are overcome by the stress of their work and take to alcohol and drugs.  It's pretty well known within the profession itself, which is why I'm surprised a bit by the comments from those who knew the fellow about that they were surprised by what happened to him and hadn't seen the signs.  If there were no signs, and indeed perhaps they were not, he must have kept them extremely well hidden.

Which brings me back to snowflake.  If you are surprised by this now, you have a real eye opener coming your way when you start working.

The Cheyenne State Leader for December 3, 1916. Carranza sets to take on Villa and Teachers take on booze.

On Sunday December 3, readers in Cheyenne were perhaps a bit relieved to find that Carranza's forces seemed to be rallying, perhaps meaning that National Guardsmen at the border wouldn't be finding Villistas crossing back over into the United States.

At the same time, teachers came out in favor of Prohibition. 

That doesn't really surprise me, and indeed strikes me as natural.  I'm not a teetotaler but its rather obvious that alcohol creates a flood of societal problems, quite a few of which teachers have to deal with daily. 

Along those lines, it amazes me that in our current era we've not only come to regard the concerns that lead to Prohibition as being quaint and naive, but we're out trying to legalize ever intoxicant we can.  Related back to the concerns of the teachers in 1916, just this past week a 19 year old died in this town of, it appears, complications due to the ingestion of an illegal drug.  It would seem that the intoxicants that  are legal now are quite enough really.

Entertainers and Drugs. Why?

Recently Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a heroin overdose.  This has been reported as a terrible tragedy, and of course it is.

Not more so, I'll note, than the hundreds of anonymous people who likewise die the same way, but whom aren't well known, or known at all.  Their deaths are equally tragic.

One of the odd things about something like this, as well, is the impulse to excuse away the tragic results of addiction on the basis that addiction is a disease.  As in this posts which maintains that addicts have no free will, and therefore cannot help themselves.  Addiction is a terrible thing, and indeed depending upon the type of addiction it is, they can become lethal, both in the need for the drug and in effects upon the body upon withdrawal from the drugs.  But the tendency in the modern world to label any vice seems self indulgent.  There is hardly any evil of any kind that somebody will not excuse away as a compulsion driven by addiction.  We all have our failings and weaknesses, to be sure, but some act against them and some act with them.  Many do both at different times, or even at the same time. By excusing every vice as an addiction, compulsion or personal quirk serves to excuse them, when perhaps the opposite is more in order.

There is, apparently, a rise in heroin use.  That catches me by surprise as what heroin mostly causes me to recall is the television police shows of the 1970s in which the police were always chasing down somebody distributing heroin.  From what i read in an article in The New Republic the other day, that in fact had its basis in truth as apparently the drug, which is amongst those which is most likely to kills it users, was in fact in big circulation in the 1960s and 70s amongst the poor.  It's a really bad drug, causing a true physical addiction that can result in the user's death.

That leads to the question of why the return of heroin now, and amongst those who don't fit into a dispossessed underclass.  According to the article, the reason has to do with prescription opiates.

Now, I'm not a pharmacist or a doctor, so that narcotics are generally opiates is something I wasn't aware of. But apparently they are, and the article claimed that prescription drugs are the modern gateway to heroin, the same way that marijuana once was.  I don't know that I'm fully convinced of this (it seems a stretch) but that prescription narcotics are now widely abused and stolen is well known. Apparently Realtors now ask people who are showing their homes to remove them from their drug cabinets, because people cruise open homes just to steal them. Anyhow, the thesis is that this has introduced opiates to a new class, who become addicted to them and then move on to an even more dangerous, unregulated drug.

I guess I have to count myself lucky here, and to be careful about being judgmental (which we should always be careful about anyhow) as I have a very hard time imagining why people want to use these drugs in general.  That is, in part, as the few times I've ever had prescriptions in this category, they've made me really sick and I determined after about a day of use that I'd rather just endure the pain, which wasn't as bad as the sad effects of the drugs.  And I can't see what effect they have that a person would enjoy. The one time I've had morphine, after ending up in the hospital due to a horse accident, I couldn't stand it, even though it didn't make me ill.  It made me sleep a weird chemical sleep that is just horrible.

I don't even like the feeling that conventional alcohol gives a person.  I like beer okay, but I don't like to feel any effect from drinking it, which means that I wouldn't be too inclined to sit and drink that much of it.  This doesn't make me virtuous, it makes me lucky.

Anyhow, having said that, even if it is true that the heroin boom is due to prescription drugs, I still can't see why this is so common amongst entertainers.  The most common cited reason is stress.  I guess I can see that a bit, as people in really stressful occupations are more subject to drug and alcohol abuse, and other sorts of vices.  I know that drug and alcohol addiction (as well as other addictions) are regarded as an occupational hazard for lawyers and most state bars have programs to address it.  But that just seems different to me.  Acting as a job wouldn't seem to be stressful in and of itself, although getting roles would be extremely stressful, I'd guess.  For that reason, I'd guess, most actors probably would want to have a back up career, but maybe they don't. And I'd guess that perhaps if a person has been successful that might actually prevent them from having one.  Still, I know that at least some, like Wilford Brimley or Paul Newman have, in the form of farms.  I guess it's easy for me to not appreciate the stress they're under.

Still, it does seem that as a class they're bizarrely subject to problems of a personal nature, and always have been.  It's certainly the case that going all the way back to the silent film days you can find examples of actors having extreme personal problems.  Is this unique to them, or is it perhaps that the vices that average people are subject to simply become better known amongst them. Or perhaps they have the means and opportunity to exercise their failings in a way that average people do not.  Probably the fact that people cater to their vices doesn't help, whereas most people have to hide theirs.  And at least in musicians, drugs have long been a problem.  There are jazz songs dating back to the dawn of recorded music that have drugs, sometimes in a hidden fashion, but often quite openly, as their topic. 

In the end, I guess, I don't know what to make of this topic. But I do feel that one of the tragedies of a tragedy like this, is that we don't really take note of the average people who fall prey to the same ill.