I am waiting for the problems being caused by legalizing pot to begin surfacing. There should be a significant increase in crime because pot makes you lethargic and not want to work but you will still have to pay for all that dope so the dopers will increase their stealing to get the dope, not to mention the money they will still need to live.

I was in Southeast Asia at the end of Nam and there was a really huge dope problem in the military with most officers just looking the other way, you know, kind of like legalizing drugs. The dopers didn't just smoke the tiny little roaches they were smoking in the US, they kept increasing the amount of pot they were smoking because, as you use dope, it continues to take increasing amounts to get the same buzz and, if you want more buzz, you have to take a lot more dope. By the time I was there, the dopers were smoking big pot cigars and were stoned all of the time, even in their sleep. Many of them were walking vegetables. Human nature tells me that the same thing will happen in the states which legalize pot. It will be party time.

I worked the grave yard shift at Udorn and there was this stoner who came to work so stoned that the shift supervisor put a chair in the middle of the floor away from anything he could destroy and told the stoner to sit there all night except to go to the bathroom. When that supe left, the next supe was an idiot who decided that the stoner was going to start "earning his keep", in spite of the fact that the mail room was full of stoners who had damaged aircraft on the flight line, and send the stoner out on the flight line endangering us and very expensive aircraft. When the idiot supe took over and told us of his "brilliant" plan, we begged him not to do it because it scared the crap out of us but the supe refused. (You would be surprised at how fast an F-4 can go up in a ball of flames and you can't out run that ball of fire, you know, like they show in you Hollywood, especially if you are in the cockpit or under the wing when she blows. Think instant crispy critters.)

The base mail room had a number of stoners who had damaged or destroyed F-4 fighter aircraft while stoned. I met some of them and they thought it was funny they caused the damage they did. One of them knocked the nose landing gear out from under a parked F-4, almost killing some one, another stuck a ECM pod through a center line fuel tank (fortunately the fuel tank was empty or there could have easily been an major explosion), and others did things like destroy wings. The only reason they were not court marshaled was because the Air Forced didn't want to admit they had a dope problem.

So we flight line guys did a little brainstorming about how to survive on the flight line and not get killed or court marshaled because the stoner destroyed an F-4 fighter plane. We decided the safest thing was to get control of the hydraulic lifts we called jammers and were used to upload the pods on the aircraft wing pylons because the stoner could kill us and destroy that plane in an instant with the jammer. We were seriously concerned.

I was the unfortunate soul who was selected by the idiot supe to take the first trip to the flight line with the stoner. We were sent out to upload an ALQ 71 pod which was considered a 15 minute job (from the time the jammer picked up the pod until the jammer withdrew from the plane with the pod attached to the pylon) but it only takes a stoner one second to kill you on the flight line. I ran out to the flight line and jumped on a jammer so he would have to take the step van out to the plane. I quickly grabbed a pod and positioned it perfectly under the wing pylon for the stoner to connect the pod to the plane while I did my job by turning off the jammer and sitting on the jammer making sure the jammer didn't go anywhere, as required by the technical orders for doing the job. I sat there for 1.5 hours doing jammer watch while watching the stoner drop the 14 inch crescent wrench before he finally got the pod attached to the pylon, SIX TIMES LONGER THAN NORMAL.

All he had to do was turn two large nuts on the pylon a quarter of a turn with the 14 inch wrench to engage two hooks in the pylon through two large eyes on the pod to hold the pod to the pylon and then attach two electronic quick connects, one of which you just pushed on and then turned a quarter turn to lock the connector in place and the other one you had to push on and then thread the connector down. It took the stoner 1.5 hours to do that.

The next night the stoner decided to come to work straight the first time since he had been there. He and I did the same job, it only took us 15 minutes to do the job, and he told me he didn't realize that it had taken him 1.5 hours the night before because he was stoned. That could easily have turned out really bad, you know, like with a destroyed F-4 and me dead.

Stoners will tell you that they actually function better when they are stoned than when they are straight, you know, just like drunks tell you the same thing, but that is because being stoned is like being drunk, you don't know how stoned you are because you are stoned. If you have ever had to work with stoners when they are stoned and when they are straight, you know their performance drops way off when they are stoned. The stoners are just like drunks in that both of them think their performance improves when they are on their drug but they both actually do worse, much worse.

Now what do you think is going to happen in these states legalizing pot when you get all of those stoners driving around stoned out of their minds, using dangerous tools and equipment, and other dangerous activities. Obviously, more people are going to be injured and killed with more property being damaged. Keep an eye on this.

BTW, contrary to what the stoners tell you, research shows that pot does much more damage than tobacco and tobacco doesn't inhibit your actions the way pot does. Pot does significant brain damage, you are 40% more like to get lung cancer from smoking pot than from smoking tobacco, pot has been proven to increase sterility (a good thing), and other such things. You will never hear that from the dopers or drug sellers. If you think we have problems in this country with tobacco and alcohol, wait until you start seeing what legalized pot is going to do.

With more drugs being legalized, it is obviously time to....