A week later, and the pothead kids are still mad.

I'm still getting several nasty e-mails from the pothead community in response to last week's article on the druggies at University of Colorado in Boulder in which I opined that even though dopers are pretty much societal residue with no real value to the rest of us, law enforcement and the college still have an obligation to try to save many of them from themselves by arresting them and shutting down the drug culture by any means necessary. And I stand behind that thought.

We need to bring the drug war full-scale to Boulder and other places where drug dealers and their customers feel safe and start cracking down. Every user needs to be forced into a treatment program and assigned to perform community service, maybe cleaning our parks in bright orange jumpsuits that say "I have no self-esteem so I got high" on the back. Every dealer who sells drugs needs to spend time in jail, ideally one like that set up by Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. You want to sell drugs on campus? Fine. Your next ninety days will be spent living in a tent inside a barbed wire fence somewhere along the front range and you'll eat baloney sandwiches or MRE's every day and perform whatever labor they deem proper. You can't sell dope on campus if you're not there, can you? And repeat offenders get barred from Boulder County. The school also needs to drug test students and require treatment for users and expulsion for anyone caught possessing or selling drugs.

That sort of thing will cure the problem and give CU back the credibility that it once had as an actual institution of higher learning. Right now it's just got a reputation as a party school that turns out hard-drinking drug users and I for damned sure would have to think long and hard before offering a job to anyone with a CU degree.

When I went to CU Boulder as a visiting student one semester some years back, I was astounded that they dared impose a "zero-tolerance" ban on firearms anywhere on school grounds under which the possession of even a single legally-owned gun would get you expelled. But illegal drugs were and still are just fine, according to the same campus administrators. You can't hunt, target shoot of defend yourself in Boulder but you can smoke your brains out...that's ok in that Bizarro world.

Now since posting my original piece, this site has been deluged with posters, mainly from the Boulder area, who have fallen into a predictable rut. First they call me names or otherwise insult me and this site. Then they post some cut-paste crap from other pro-drug advocacy sites and try to pass it off as their own. (Yes, stoners, I check. I guess your weed binging makes you too lazy to write your own stuff.) Then they try to convince me that they all have great jobs at places like NASA, own nice homes and don't live with their parents any more, and have the respect and admiration of everyone around them. Of course they also admit that everyone around them smokes pot too, so how hard is it to be the most respected and admired person in a group of slackers? Not very, I'm guessing. I'm also guessing that most are really living in campus dorms that their folks pay for and they hope to someday graduate and find a job that doesn't require drug-testing and/or is willing to overlook a record of arrests for drug use, minor in possession of alcohol, drunk in public, and the like.
Sadly, I see a lot of them heading for career positions as stockboys at the local Sam's Club. They'll learn that good employers don't want immature dope-smoking kids with below-average scholastic records (that means "grades" for you potheads), no matter how many times that their over-indulgent parents have told them how special they are.

Now I turned off the option which allows just anyone to post comments here, but I still allow comments to be sent for my review and if anyone has a comment that does not use obscene language or insult me personally, and which offers some substantive contribution beyond "Dude, you've got to free your mind and fight the man..." then feel free to submit it and I'll probably approve it.

Still, I'm betting that all I get is a bunch more "Dude, you're ignorant...@#$%& you!". However, being mature enough to handle that, and being a benevolent dictator here, I'm actually inviting more rational and at least semi-mature comments.