Suburban pot-smoking friends "just don't get it"


I wrote this in February and just decided to publish it now as these issues have been very much on my mind as I work on the Community Forums on Violence. Seems to me to be particularly at this point, while we are dealing with the stabbings and shootings and beatings and murders in our neighborhood related to the drug trade. We cannot reduce violence in this city without dramatically changing the drug economy that controls the streets in so many of our inner city neighboorhds.

I was dumbfounded.
 
There I was, at the suburban home of a dear friend, where I had been sharing the story published that day in the Democrat and Chronicle about my suddenly becoming a community activist in Marketview Heights. 
 
My friend knew about the neighborhood problems already, as she had listened often to me worry over them, more than once in tears. Earlier I had told her about watching the night before as the BMW's and Audi's and SUV's drove up to the minimart across the street. The occupants weren't there, I assure you, to pick up a quart of milk or a loaf of bread.
 
Despite this, my friend was standing there telling me that her adult son was having some friends over and they would be smoking pot. 
 
She was okay with it, she said. After all, she herself had smoked pot in her youth. 
 
I responded angrily. I said I could not stay. Aside from the legal issues involved, I have asthma.
 
Recent medical research has shown that long-term, habitual marijuana smoking can be just as bad for your heart and lungs as tobacco. It is not a "harmless" drug. Even short-term use in susceptible persons can cause cardiovascular and respiratory distress. 
 
Still, that's not the primary issue for me. My friend's son may choose to expose himself to that harm as he sees fit in my absence. But unless he and his friends are growing the pot in their basements, their purchase of illegal substances contributes to drug-related crime and violence elsewhere.
 
Middle class and wealthy people look down on neighborhoods like mine, lulling themselves into thinking that the real problem is all those drug-addicted poor people. They might even be good little liberals who want the government to fund rehabilitation programs instead of putting the addicts in jail. 
 
But the drug trade would not be profitable without the middle and upper class abusers who think that what they are doing is just having a party. Because they are safe in their quiet, well-to-do neighborhoods, they can't see how much harm their little "parties" are causing in troubled areas like mine. 
 
It may be that pot should be legalized because, after all, tobacco and alcohol are also harmful but are legal and socially acceptable addictive substances. But so long as it is illegal, the network required to grow, distribute and sell it will involve criminals, many of whom will commit violence, even murder, to protect their business.
 
For example, in 2001 a brutal murder above the Carnegie Deli in New York City was connected to marijuana sales. In 2005, marijuana growing operations in Alberta, Canada, were involved in the killing of four Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
 
The full impact is difficult to track because police often do not keep records separating marijuana-related violence from other drug violence. 
 
I know the drug trade in my neighborhood is about cocaine and heroin. But my "socially responsible" liberal friends who boycott WalMart and refuse to buy products made in sweatshops need to understand that the criminal element producing and selling pot is often cut from the same cloth — and may even be the very same people — as those operating on my street.
 
It is naïve for them to think the pot business involves only Grateful Deadheads sitting around toking joints and talking philosophy. There's too much money to be made.
 

Posted: Wed - December 13, 2006 at 12:05 AM          

©