For the final 48 hours leading up to election night, I was as paranoid as a pothead. After foolishly failing to get an absentee ballot, I had to sit back and hope that California, a state notorious for economic imbalance, illegal alien ignorance and just g-d awful streets (and traffic) would add another notch to its tattered belt by legalizing marijuana.
My personal experiences with weed are several, albeit all in the past, but my professional encounters with marijuana are frequent. I tour colleges, I make pot jokes at every show, they never fail, and sometimes if I'm at a fraternity house, I'll walk into the wrong room at the wrong time or hit the smell once I enter. If you ask me, pot's already legal. Or at least it's legal enough to those who smoke.
Usually I let people do their thing, I let the college student take the bong hit outside with friends while I isolate myself elsewhere, but really? Legalize marijuana? Really?
It's always funny to notice how so many of those who supported Prop 19 or have sponsored the campaign, are people who have already drug records (Sean Parker) and just want to justify their own misdemeanor.
Now I've butted heads with plenty on election day. People who played the freedom of choice card, the tax revenue card, the it's the parents' responsibility to educate their kids card while I played the 2nd hand smoke card, the warped message this sends to kids card and the how long until every drug is legalized card.
Now if those points squared off in a 3-on-3 elimination tag team match, the pro-19 team would win. Freedom of choice is huge. It's why voting against gay marriage is fear-based and nauseously 'traditional.' You're saying you're against love and happiness? For tax revenue, money is king, anything that raises money for a failing economy is a plus. And you bet parents need to take their kids aside and have one of those 'talks.'
Each of those points, individually and specifically are perfect on an individual basis. Here is the problem: Prop 19 wasn't about the individual, it was about the society.
Laws are moral codes meant to raise the society when people's ethics are not up to par. It's why murder, stealing and vandalism are illegal. No, that's not the same as smoking up, but those are actions that need to be outlawed to safeguard the society. Prop 19 would've lowered the ethical level of the society.
You need to safeguard against the negligent parents, the over-abusers who could potentially get in a car after toking up in their private residence. And you need to safeguard the society against relying on an illicit drug for money rather than reworking its budget and reallocating its funds for the greatest good while not increasing their grip on the taxpayer. You really are willing sacrifice California's integrity for some extra cash? It's not the same as the cocaine dependency in Columbia or Panama, but it's consistent in theory.
I'm not trying to smack a smoker on the hand with a ruler. Freedom of choice is great for the individual, but when the individual has a tendency to get baked already, the society has to step in for the greater good, for the bigger picture.
If the meaning of life for you is having a good time, making as much money as possible and living 'me first,' and at night or at least on the weekends we can rage like Brian Wilson of the SF Giants - that's cool, that's fun, that even makes me wish I was invited. But what is the meaning of life to a group or a people? To raise that group to greater heights and improve upon itself in any way possible. Prop 19 would've made it hard for us to rise up to greater heights if we were going to be stuck on the couch watching Scooby Doo.
Yeah, a pot joke, but it always works :)
Here's to the 53%.
I am a Tufts alumnus who was back on campus last week while headlining Theta Chi’s Comedy Night for Haiti. I picked up a copy of the Tufts Daily in the Mayer Campus Center and found the Jan. 25 Features article by Carter Rogers, “High expectations take their toll like never before.”
While I can agree and say how hard it is and how we are surrounded by burdens and how it’s impossible to get a job, make money, etc … that just isn’t true. So I’d rather give you, my fellow Jumbos, a few pointers to help lessen the overwhelming troubles of life.
You should know your environment. It is the job of mainstream news media to make the world seem as dangerous as possible. Fortunately or unfortunately, that is what sells. If I could break news stories into three categories, they would be: problems, distractions and solutions. Their purposes are to upset, to divert and to inform, respectively. Problems have actually been upgraded to catastrophes thanks to the economic recession, which is a contraction in the marketplace and not an apocalypse. Distractions are the reason we’re stuck with Paris Hilton and forced to wonder where the “Jersey Shore” cast is going to show up next. And solutions may wait ’til page 10 of a publication when the other two categories take up the first nine.
Also, the quantity of media has grown exponentially in the past decade with the advent and expansion of the Internet and social media. That’s why terror and panic seem so rampant in our environment. Thanks so much, Ashton Kutcher, for getting in a race with CNN to see who could have one million followers first on Twitter.com. Because the more we see tweets about bloodshed or scandal, the more unsettled we’ll feel.
I could recommend two remedies for that: Either try avoiding the news for one week and see if your mood changes, or take a walk and see for yourself how dangerous the environment is or isn’t.
You should follow your nose. At the risk of sounding like a commencement speaker, don’t let the pressure of finding a job run you ragged and don’t let that first job define your career. A career is just a series of jobs. My first job was a day camp counselor. After college my first job was an intern for the National Hockey League. Now I’m a comedian — go figure. You’re only looking for what you’re going to do next, not what you’re going to do for the next 50 years. I don’t expect to be a comedian my whole life, but plans change (or stay the same).
And don’t feel like you have to change or compromise your integrity to fit in to some company or club. It’s just like a relationship — the other person should like you for who you are. Another alternative is you could always make your own club. That’s what Bill Gates did, that’s what Tufts alum and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar (E ’88) did and that’s what Oprah Winfrey did times infinity.
It’s okay to seek out help. Communication is the universal solvent. Whether it’s making up with your parents or getting back together with your girlfriend or boyfriend, it’s all accomplished through communication. That’s why counseling can be very helpful. While at Tufts I went to the Counseling and Mental Health Service once and got through every present problem and upset I had at the time, and when I walked out of the building, I felt the weight of the world off my shoulders. Why did it work? Because someone was listening to me and acknowledging what I had to say. That was really it. It’s good to have a few people like those at a counseling center who can listen, because stuff happens.
When there are cases that can go off the rails, this is when the person in the other chair suggests what is wrong with you. However, any medical diagnosis is not the best idea; it’s one thing to have a friend offer two cents, but it’s another when you’re being told what your problem is and then it’s given a label.
Depression is a feeling, not an illness. Anyone can be in a funk, but if you’re feeling down, it doesn’t warrant you being labeled as something out of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. If someone has high blood pressure, that’s something clinically proven that you can treat, but if I’m sad or feeling overwhelmed, that doesn’t mean I need to be put in an arbitrary category. It may mean I need to take steps to handle my environment, whether it’s a person, a group or a situation.
Those are a few of the things I have applied to my life to keep the gloom away. Yes, the gloom sometimes returns when we don’t want it to or when our schedule overwhelms us or we’re overstressing about life’s obstacles, but it’s just gloom; it’s not us. If we let it be us, we won’t get anything done. Thankfully, we all know we are capable of getting a lot done because we all did get into Tufts in the first place.
So do the next thing ahead of you, plan accordingly and have fun when you get ther
