More on the War on Drugs, PT. 109
Monday, May 17, 2010 Here in San Francisco, the lab technician who borrowed office supplies from her drug-testing lab, little things like Post-it notes, heroin, and coke, her troubles are mounting, not to mention the City’s. I wrote in a previous column if one was to hang outside the halls of corrective justice these days, the sounds of whoops and howls can be heard all the way down Bryant Street out to the Bay. As case after case is being dismissed because of tampering with evidence, more and more inmates are being released with a second chance for life. I wonder what they learned behind bars. It’s wrong to do drugs? It’s okay to do drugs if someone else takes the fall for you? It’s okay to do drugs if you never get caught? Life is a fickle bitch?
The lab tech was first suspected of skimming samples way back in November of ought Nine. In December of that same year, she was let go for investigation, oops, I mean, she took a leave of absence for personal reason. In March of this year, the crime lab shuts down and the suspect is taken into custody.
If someone is moving sixteen tons of WEED, I have a hard time defending that kind of movement of product, even though while Marijuana is still illegal, someone has to or needs to do it. But when someone gets busted for a few pounds, I don’t have a problem. But on the other side of the hypocritical teeter-toter, if someone gets popped with any powder, meth, or anything that’s not WEED, I have very little sympathy. I know, not fair. I said I was a pothead, not a mainliner.
No one remembers but in the months preceding that fateful date of the ninth of September, 2001, New York City was facing its biggest corruption hearings since the salad days of Serpico back in the old real Seventies when everything was grittier and graft was King.
The police were being charged with everything from moonlighting as muscle for organized crime to skimming of product from lockup and reselling drugs back onto the streets. They were on the verge of the biggest shakeup NYC had ever seen but then that day happened.
A lot of bad corrupt cops died heroically trying to save the citizens of Manhattan when the three towers went down. It wasn’t only the cops that weren’t on the take or held ‘second jobs,’ that gave their life up in the service of doing for others. Life isn’t that simple when you ride in the black and whites, even when it comes to the Man.
My point, as long as there is so much money to be made from drugs, it will turn honest people crooked and sober geeky, technically-advantaged kids into addicts. Of course, I am professionally speaking...
What is happening here in San Francisco could occur anywhere else.
A prisoner in San Quentin sent a handwritten note to the City Attorney’s Office asking for unlimited damages from the state because, “...evidence was purposefully withheld that affected the outcome of the claimant’s case.” True.
There are other aspects of this particular case that might make it hard for this inmate to get out, but this filing is his first step and it does look good concerning calling a mistrial based on the tampering of evidence. Mostly because the evidence ain’t there no mo’.
Follow the money...
Guvanator Ahnold slashed the state budget like he was in Conan Three. (Much sadness and heartfelt good-byes to the great Frank Frazetta, the fantastic artist who drew the Conan and early Tarzan comics, died 5.10.2010) Because of his republican roots and that he’ll be leaving office to go back to the well...the movies, he hurt the people he hears from the least, the poor. He took away child care, medicine, and mucho dollars in the form of public aid.
So does this open the door for the Legalization of Weed? Yes and no. Taxation with WEED representin’.
Let’s go to the grass roots, the City of San Francisco. It is an understatement that the country is looking at us to see how we are going to handle the WEED issue. So what does our City do? They do what they do best, delegate and dilute. I am going to say it again, Delegate and Dilute.
The Board of Supervisors, (because SF is such a fucked up place in terms of trying to do the right thing and then either get greedy or talk about an issue so much people get bored and it disappears, we have a board that is supposed to represent a city as divergent as ours, but all it has done is make everything work slower and gives power to people who shouldn’t be able to reproduce or in some cases, have batteries for a dildo.) elected a Pot Task Force to assist in learning (figuring out?) how to regulate the POT Industry. This is what I know without doing any research, of the thirteen members (sounds like a biker club) most are dispensary owners, most. I think there is one grower and one all around stoner. Greatest gig going in San Francissy right now for that special person who likes to sit around a table and say, “that’s cool with me.”
My feeling right now is like that scene from G2 when Herman Roth is in Cuba with the leaders of Industry and the Mafia bigwigs like Mr. Michael Corleone. In that simplistic but effective scene, Herman Roth (Meyer Lansky) is telling the group about their plans for Cuba. How they are going to set up shop with the help of the local government, Big Business, and of course, the Syndicate while the whole time the great
Lee Strasburg is cutting a cake and handing out the portions to the people he’s doing business with.
That’s what is going on now. The pie is slowly being cut up. There is too much money for that not to happen. Because of personal preferences and prejudices, I’m okay with some of the owners who are on the Task Force, and others, I am highly (in a bad way) suspect of. It wouldn’t be fair at this time to name names, but follow the money...
Speaking of...
If I can get the courage up I might leave the house.
There has been so much going on up north, or as we say back home, up nort’, up there Mendo-way that I feel I need to get up there and see for myself what is happening. Most weekends I’m hearing of town halls and local meetings of the PTA talking about what is going to happen to the area after Legalization. Huge concerns when a third or more of your income is derived by the actions of a long-hair puffy-eyed, overalls wearin’ Marijuany Millionaire named Josh. People are worried, and rightly so...
Also I want to see how people are organizing. We have like six months to get ready for the vote of Legalization on the ballot.
Here’s the deal... The other side is organized. They have money and have been organizing for years making sure that Gays don’t marry and chickens get room mingle and be fabulous, not cooped up without rights.
Our side, face it, smokes dope and watches the Wizard of OZ synced up to Pink Floyd. And that’s on a good day. Creative, yes, but we’re still on the couch!!!
If we are serious about having the ability to smoke POT and not go to prison, we have to get up, stand up and leave the house. I’m really thinking about it.
I implore anyone in California reading this to get involved on some level. The pot busts have gone up for San Fra
ncisco and New York. Surprising you’d think for two of the country’s most liberal and progressive cities. Fires are starting in residential neighborhoods because organized crime is behind indoor growing and gives little regard for safety when dollars are a concern. Not to say that their not in our national forests too. (Remember to stay on the paths now while visiting any government park.)
We have a chance to shine a light into an industry that been made to lurk in parking lots after dark. Transporting product late at night when anything can happen. As long as drugs are illegal good cops will go bad by being in the right place at the wrong time with too much money involved for a guy or woman with a few kids trying to make it on 60 large a year when the drug runner you’re busting throws away in one night in a club more than you make in a month. Or a lab technician who got a little between her nails and with a simple sniff or lick, changes her views on something she once thought so abhorrent.
These drugs are funny business, no?
And to end with the most fucked up, a drug bust gone wrong. What happens when police go to the wrong house with bad intel. And yes, dogs will be killed.
Everything is the way we want it until we change it.
Sorry for an over balance of parenthesis today.
(More Later)
Reader Comments (1)
Strange thing, now I feel like I have enough power to take part in that project. But how much enthusiasm I've got?