Dear Garrison,
You said in your column not long ago, "Nobody was ever indicted for watering plants." I beg to differ. I was arrested, indicted, convicted, and sentenced to three years for watering plants. They called it manufacturing illegal drugs. Our government's "zealous cruelty" is not new, or confined to one party.
Live Free and Prosper,
Rycke B.,
Natural Gardener
Grants Pass, OR
Touché. You have got me, sir. I agree with you about the "war on drugs" being mostly a case of zealous cruelty, although hanging around dopers in my youth sort of punctured the romance of marijuana for me. There was always a lot of it around among musicians and English majors, and it tended to make people stupid. They took a toke and smiled and smiled and got quiet and intensely passive. Still, that's no reason to throw people into prison for watering plants.
GK has an excellent point. It does seem to make the regular crowd quite passive. Perhaps this is why it is still illegal. If the dopers dried themselves off for long enough get some representatives on their side, they might just get the zealots focused on another vice. Or perhaps it’s because one acre of the junk can make as much paper as four acres of trees and can produce ten times the ethanol of corn.
Posted by Paul | September 10, 2007 10:46 PM
People have been arrested and fined for watering plants in Australia too. With Level 4 and 5 Water Restrictions in many towns, and cars driving around with "Water Patrol" on their sides, one has to be very careful with the precious fluid.
Posted by Brad | September 11, 2007 7:08 PM
There was always a lot of it around among musicians and English majors, and it tended to make people stupid. They took a toke and smiled and smiled and got quiet and intensely passive. Still, that's no reason to throw people into prison for watering plants.
Once, a month or so after I graduated from college with fresh English degree in hand, I toked up with friends in Seattle. I pulled my laptop onto my knees and decided to write a novel; I had life figured out, and I began to write.
The next day, I looked at that word document. Under the title, "What Jennifer and I learned while high on a rainy day in Seattle," there was...
nothing.
I decided not to get high and write after that. Sigh.
Posted by Kate | September 23, 2007 7:52 AM