Hey, I know where you can score some crazy, ‘glued to the couch’ stuff
Next time I’m out at the marijuana store, remind me to grab some GG #4. How can any pothead resist this enticing description — “The effects of this sticky flower may leave you glued to the couch.” Hey, who wouldn’t want to end up glued to the couch for the evening? It’s either that or Arcata Trainwreck — “effects can be euphoric and focused before transitioning to a state of relaxation.” Which is obviously why that particular kind of sativa cannabis is called Trainwreck, because who doesn’t associate train wrecks with “euphoria,” not to mention “relaxation?” Economist Milton Friedman once pointed out that you can’t have both open borders and a welfare state, which if you’ve ever been to Lawrence, a hospital emergency room, or a district court on Monday morning, you know is obviously true. But watching the lines this week in Leicester and Northampton, where recreational pot stores opened, perhaps an update of Friedman’s axiom is in order: You can’t have open drug sales and a welfare state. Believe me, I’m not claiming that everyone who will now be buying marijuana is going on the dole, but let’s face it, a large percentage of druggies do end up … glued to the couch. And those of us who don’t have two hours to spend waiting in line in scenic Leicester to spend $19 on a joint end up paying for the … train wreck. That was not an impressive-looking lot of stoners out there celebrating the dawning of the dawn. It looked like Occupy Wall Street without the smell, or the old Pine Street Inn without the nip bottles. Yes, yes, I know, marijuana has always been available, and no one has ever had the slightest bit of trouble scoring any. I get it — after all, there used to be graffiti scrawled on the base of the Tobin Bridge, “HOWIE CARR SMOKES DUST.” Not if I could help it, but sometimes, it was, you know, like, altered. Like most people my age, I well understand being … glued to the couch. But now I quote Ringo Starr: “No, no, no I don’t smoke it no more/ I’m tired of waking up on the floor/ No thank you please/ It only makes me sneeze/ And then it makes it hard to find the door.” You want to fry your brain, go for it. It’s a free country. But just as they say that your First Amendment rights end at the bridge of my nose, as far as I’m concerned your right to get totally twisted and lose your commercial driver’s license and your right to carry and every other damn thing does not mean I should have to pay for your EBT card and your MassHealth when you get too messed up to work. Again, not everyone has a problem. But the fact is, weed will be a lot easier to get going forward, and that means more people are going to get bleeped up on it. That’s why I’d just as soon have kept it a little harder to get. I voted against legalization, twice. By the way, even though it’s no longer fashionable to say so, marijuana is a gateway drug. And very few people just do one drug, they drink, too. Let me quote another old rock song, from Bob Dylan, about what happens when you mix ‘n’ match. “Like a fool I mixed ‘em/ And it strangled up my mind/ Now people just get uglier/ And I have no sense of time.” I’ll probably take some heat for writing this, but I’m not that concerned. Most of the people who’ll hate this column are … glued to the couch.