Follow the Flowers

 

Chinese Proverb:

 

“When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.”

 

This is where I’m at right now with life.

Selfish? Or just plain human?

So, I’m in my third month of living on the green island of Ireland, and I must say, I feel like a completely different person than when I arrived here in January.  I mean I’m still the same me; but some of my perspectives on life have changed considerably, and it’s getting harder and harder for me to decide how I feel about my future.  But that’s for another time, another day.  Just wanted to update you on why it is this is my first post since December! I know, shame on me.

 

What’s been scratching at the back of my mind the past couple of days is a discussion that I had in my Organizational Behavior class.  The topic for the day was power – intended, unintended power; negative and positive power; all types of power.  We got on the issue of a well-known man here in Ireland, Niall Mellon, who started the Niall Mellon Township Trust which helps build houses for the poor in South Africa (read about it here).  It was brought up that someone thinks this man has a considerable ego, and that he just gets a kick out of basically being a celebrity among these people of South Africa; the fact that he was mostly doing this for the publicity and to feed his ego rather than to actually help people.  The question is: does it matter why he’s doing it, as long as he’s doing it?  Does it matter if he parades around knowing that “he’s the man” as long as he is actually helping these people?  In all reality, I doubt there are many people anywhere that do anything without some personal motive, because otherwise, let’s face it, they wouldn’t care enough to do it.

 

This led me to wonder, is anyone really so selfless that they help others completely because they just want to help others?  Or is self-enhancement just part of human nature?  Is it impossible because we are humans to help someone purely because we know they need our help?  Or in the back of our mind are we always wondering how or what we will gain from the event?  It is naïve to claim that there are absolutely no selfless individuals in this world, and that we are all greedy, greedy people.  However, this is not my point at all. My point is to question the relationship between wanting to enhance ourselves and human nature.  Is being a little self-seeking just part of who are as a human race?  And if so, should it matter that we may have ulterior motives when doing good as long as we’re doing good?

 

 

Grass is always greener..

on the other side.  This is completely true when speaking about the legalization of recreational marijuana.  Legalizing marijuana would mean a huge annual profit for the government, and in turn, an annual betterment of America as well since there would be a plethra of funds to be spread throughout projects aimed at making America a better place to live.

I was recently involved in a debate over the legalization of marijuana for a  speech class, and while my class did not vote me as the winner, I feel that the information I found while researching for the debate is well worth sharing.

To start, I would like to show statistics comparing the harmfulness of the legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, as compared to the pointlessly illegal drug of marijuana (in general, alcohol was ranked 5th, tobacco 9th, and finally weed 11th) :

• Alcohol is 3 times more addictive than marijuana, nicotine 6 times more
• Withdrawal from alcohol 6 times worse, nicotine 4 times worse
• There were over 20,000 deaths from alcohol in 2003; this is not including deaths from accidents or homicides.  Deaths from marijuana? 0.
• Study by University of California found that there is no link between marijuana and cancer.  On the other hand, 2 to 4 percent of all cancer cases are found to be directly or indirectly related to the consumption of alcohol.  Furthermore, THC ( the hallucinagenic component found in marijuana) might even kill aging cells which might otherwise become cancerous! 
• Tobacco causes 40% of all hospital illnesses, and alcohol is the source of at least half of the visits to emergency rooms each year

Keeping marijuana illegal is costing the government, so basically us, an astronomical amount of money each year:

• In 2007,  872,720 people were arrested for marijuana charges and of those,  775,137 were arrested just for the possession of weed.
• The average daily cost per inmate is $67.55.  This means that it cost us $52,360,504 in 2007 alone to house nonviolent “criminals.”
• The government spends approximately $19 billion a year on the war on drugs (this does not include state money that is spent), about 20% of which goes to fighting marijuana.  That is a whopping $3.8 billion spend on trying to catch and prosecute individuals that are not harming anyone or anything.
• Of this $19 billion, 67% goes to supply reduction, meaning $12.73 billion A YEAR goes to pay law enforcement to unjustifiably convict harmless people every day, uselessly.
• In 1972, the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Use stated “estimate by law enforcement personnel that the elimination of use is unattainable.”  So why are we still wasting our time and money?

Besides the extra money that would be available that would come from eliminating the fight against marijuana, the government would gain even more money from the sale and production of weed:

• People spend $11 billion a year on marijuana.  If the government would tax it like alcohol or tobacco, even just 5%, they would make a profit of $550 million a year!
• The production and sale of marijuana would provide new jobs for Americans – i.e. more income tax for the government.

Now, I’m not trying to promote the use of marijuana.  Rather, I’m attempting to spread the knowledge that the government tries to stifle in their struggle to promote weed as the antichrist because of their fear.  What they don’t understand is that it’s okay to admit you’re wrong, and to correct what you did.  It is not too late for the government to say they were incorrect in making marijuana illegal, and hemp in general, and to now embrace it as a profitable market for America.  I say yes to reefer madness, yes to marijuana sweeping across our glowing green lands.

 

All of the information in this post found from the following sites:

• http://csdp.org
• http://drugwarfacts.org
• http://cbsnews.com
• http://seattlepi.nwsource.com