Damon Stoudamire of Blazers fame was caught with a pound of marijuana. For those of you who don’t know, that is a lot of weed. Like a felony amount. If you’re lucky enough to be caught with a pound of America’s number one cash crop, you can even expect some federal charges to be brought against you!
That is just what is happening to Mr. Stoudamire. He and his father are in deep doo-doo because the cops found weed in the Stoudamire (Junior) residence. How the cops got in to his house in the first place smacks of weirdness to me. They say a burglar alarm was going off in his big house, so they just had to check it all out and make sure everything was okay.
I guess if I wasn’t so suspicious of cops in the first place, I’d have an easier time believing this. The cops in my neighborhood will only come during the daylight hours and on Friday and Saturday nights, when all the rich people from the hills come down to hang out at the Schnitz.
But Damon Stoudamire has a lot more money than Miss Rose Richard. He can afford things like big bricks of weed. He gets police presence in his neighborhood. In my neighborhood, junkies and meth addicts can walk unmolested, as they break into my mail box and spread refuse on my stoop. In Stoudamire’s neighborhood, those folks would be picked up faster than you can spell delta nine tetrahydracannabinol.
At any rate, Damon’s in big trouble. Now, you may ask, what does one do with an entire pound of wacky tobaccy? Since I have never, ever seen that much weed in my whole life (and that my friends, is gospel truth), I personally have no idea what I would do with those illegal drugs. Other than promptly turn it over to the authorities.
Some dishonest folks, after purchasing such an ungodly amount of illegal drugs would turn around and sell it. Others would divide it up amongst the friends who donated to the cause. Some would even keep the WHOLE bag and smoke it up ALL BY THEMSELVES. Those people are called potheads.
The only people you ever hear of having this much pot are usually famous. Famous people tend to have much more money and far better connections than the average college student.
Margaret Cho admits in her book, “I’m the one that I want,” to keeping a large brick of marijuana in her freezer during a dark depression. When she wasn’t smoking it up, she was sharing it with her friends. Now we have Portland’s own Blazer baller in some very deep trouble for practically the same thing, even though as of yet, we don’t know what he was going to do with that big bag of weed.
The law really doesn’t care. It really can’t, because if it did, you’d have everyone picked up with vast quantities of drugs saying they were going to use it all themselves. Which I can see with marijuana, but not something like cocaine or heroin.
Who determines what the amount for personal use is? Does a judge or a senator sit around with a big bag of drugs and say, “Shit, I think I smoked too much. This is some good shit. Jones, how much have we smoked? This is so good it should be illegal!”
I will agree that drugs are a problem. But not all drugs. I can think of at least one drug that if legalized, would save us a lot of money in the law enforcement arena. It would let us expend our energies fighting terrorism or welfare moms or whomever George W. Bush’s moral crusade is fighting this week. And maybe, it might help the Blazers stop sucking.