Boy, Jin sure is good at re-posting articles from other websites. Okay, guilty as charged. But the thing is, not everything will incite me to rant, though many things incite me to re-post. But I finally found something cannabis related that irks me enough to write about. Okay, so it's editorial time.
This here article I found at SF Weekly really got me thinking about a topic that's been on my mind for some time. Pot and pro sports -- And more specifically pot and the NFL.
Interesting read. Read it all here:
Is Marijuana Like Steroids?
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2012/05/world_anti-doping_agency_asked.php
So WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) has a problem with pot, huh? What else is new? And though American pro sports leagues don't fall under WADA jurisdiction, cannabis and cannabis users are still black-balled by their various regulatory entities.
Two cases take me back to my beloved, short-lived Los Angeles Raiders... Yes, Oaklanders, they were ours for a while as much as you guys try to forget it. And yes, they sucked most of their time down in LA. But I digress. The two cases in point I'm thinking about are the great defensive end, Greg Townsend:
http://articles.latimes.com/1988-08-06/sports/sp-7041_1_drug-test
And the USC great and Raider not-so-great, Todd Marinovich (his off field antics would later earn him the hilarious nickname Todd Marijuanavich -- Check it out, Number 13 Whoo hoo!):
And number 12... Not so Whoo hoo.
http://articles.latimes.com/1997-03-26/sports/sp-42212_1_marijuana-plant
I can't decide which word best describes the pro sports industry in the US. Evil or Wicked? These hypocritical assholes care about athletics and competition only about four or five steps below monetary profit. NFL players juice it up every fucking day on steroids, but take one puff of a joint and you get suspended? Fuck that. That's why I stopped watching that shit long, long ago.
But then one can't help but notice that the mentality towards cannabis in the pro sports world mirrors perfectly the "marijuana witch hunt" that rages to this day in every corner of every industrialized nation. The stupid, contrived paradox rages forth: Everybody loves it and uses it, but since the established societal structures of most places still attach a stygma (variant of stigma) to it, we're still "witches and warlocks" to a great extent. Hey, whatever. I've always been a freak and an outsider wherever I go, so I'm used to it. But knowing this, I never cherished any illusions of becoming an "establishment professional" and certainly not a "public servant." Because I know full well that the "establishment" would openly denounce me while they light their joints behind closed doors.
Fuck all that. And fuck the NFL.