Erskin and Louise Fulgham
went together to be with the Lord on July 23, 2013. Erskin was born on February 5, 1926 in Mathiston, MS. Louise was born on August 27, 1929 in Maben, MS. They moved to Tucson, AZ in 1957. They were married for 67 years and long standing members of Emmanuel Baptist Church. Erskin received a bronze medal for his Army service during World War II. Erskin retired from ASARCO and Louise from The University of Arizona Athletic Department. They are survived by son, Mike Fulgham; daughters, Glenda Kim, Jeanette Barger (Harvey) and Beth Fulgham; brothers, Monroe Dewberry, Hubert Fulgham (Catherine) and Henry Fulgham (Beverly); sister, Annie Lee Young; many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Services will be held Thursday, August 1, 2013 at 10:00 a.m. at EAST LAWN PALMS MORTUARY, 5801 E. Grant Rd. In lieu of flowers, donations to Honor Flight or Emmanuel Baptist Church.
(as published in the Arizona Daily Star, July 31, 2013)
Just another obituary, right? Not quite. Among the “many grandchildren” who survived Erskin, age 87 and in very frail health, and Mary Louise, age 83, was a grandson named Kyle Austin Drattlo, age 20. On July 24, the day after Erskin and Mary Louise died, Kyle and two companions, 23-year-old Christopher Edward Terry and 21-year-old Brianna Harding, were stopped for speeding in Tonapah, Nevada.
The Nevada State Police officer ran a check on the 2004 Buick they were driving. It had been reported by the Tucson Police as stolen in Tucson in connection with a murder investigation, and its owners were listed as Erskin and Louise Fulgham. Drattlo insisted to the officer that his grandparents gave him permission to use the car. So the officer then asked the trio where they were headed, and they told him they were going to a family reunion in Wyoming. One big problem. They were headed AWAY from Wyoming when they were stopped. All three were arrested and sent back to Arizona, where they were shortly charged with first-degree murder.
Here’s the part that will give you a warm, fuzzy feeling. Mary Louise Fulgham had been brutally and repeatedly stabbed to death in the chair in which she sat in her living room. Erskin Fulgham evidently saw the attack on his wife and tried to go to her aid. He didn’t make it out of the kitchen, where he too was stabbed and STOMPED AND KICKED to death by his attacker(s). The stomping was so severe that Erskin’s ribs were broken and his teeth knocked out of his mouth.
But wait, there’s more. Evidently, another grandson of Erskin and Mary Louise stopped in on the afternoon of their murder to check up on his “Nana and Papa,” which happens to be what our grandchildren refer to my wife and me. The front door of their home in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood was unlocked. He walked in and saw Nana slumped in her chair and thought she was napping. As he got closer, he saw the blood. Then he looked into the kitchen and saw the blood-splattered and severely beaten body of his Papa lying on the floor. Now, didn’t that brighten his, and your, day?
Details of this grisly double murder continue to trickle out. Evidently, grandson Drattlo and his male companion Christopher Terry are cooperating by pointing the finger at each other as to who actually committed the murders. That will help neither of them in the long run.
But here’s the really interesting part. Just today it was reported, again in the Arizona Daily Star, that Brianna Harding told police that all three of them were heavy users of Spice. She told police that they smoked Spice to the tune of 6 bags a day, at $20/bag. WTF is Spice, I asked myself? Here’s the answer, and you pot supporters won’t like it.
Synthetic cannabis is a psychoactive designer drug created by spraying natural herbs with synthetic chemicals that, when consumed, allegedly mimic the effects of cannabis. It is often known by the brand names K2 and Spice.
Research on the safety of synthetic cannabis is now becoming available. Initial studies are focused on the role of synthetic cannabis in psychosis. Synthetic cannabis may precipitate psychosis and in some cases it may be prolonged. Some studies suggest that synthetic cannabinoid intoxication is associated with acute psychosis, worsening of previously stable psychotic disorders, and it may trigger a chronic (long-term) psychotic disorder among vulnerable individuals such as those with a family history of mental illness.
When synthetic cannabis blends first went on sale in the early 2000s, it was thought that they achieved an effect through a mixture of legal herbs. Laboratory analysis in 2008 showed that this is not the case, and that they in fact contain synthetic cannabinoids that act on the body in a similar way to cannabinoids naturally found in cannabis, such as THC. It has been sold under various brand names, online, in head shops, and at some gas stations.
On November 24, 2010, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced it would use emergency powers to ban many synthetic cannabinoids within a month. In the US, as of March 1, 2011, five cannabinoids have been placed on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (and are therefore illegal to possess or use in the US); the Drug Enforcement Administration claims that said action is “to avoid an imminent hazard to the public safety.” In July 2012, the Synthetic Drug Abuse Prevention Act of 2012 was signed into law. It banned synthetic compounds commonly found in synthetic marijuana, placing them under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act.
P.S. I refuse to post any pictures of the animals who killed Erskin and Mary Louise Fulgham. Instead I want you to look at the helpless VICTIMS, married for 67 years, who suffered a horrifying and painful death.
Erskin and Louise Fulgham
CLASSIFIEDS / ARIZONA
“I have not seen SSS so riled up in ages. …… I have to agree with him that there are some really poorly thought out comments being made.”
—-Llpoh
Yeah, llpoh, and some of the poorly thought out comments are mine, intentionally.
I warned these assholes early on that I would fight fire with fire. These dumbfucks don’t know shit from Shinola about drugs, except for the fact that “Hey, I tried this (insert number of years) ago, and I came out fine.” Goddamn, that gets old.
So, dumbfucks, you’d like shit for shit? You got it. Bring it.
Oh, can you pause for one fucking second in your life and at least THINK about Erskin and Mary Louise Fulgham? Just one second?
The illiterate consumers of Spice think they’re smoking a cheap version of Mary Jane -Sss
No, they do it ,mainly, to pass the drug test. A pot like high. But a wrong high.
“Oh, can you pause for one fucking second in your life and at least THINK about Erskin and Mary Louise Fulgham? Just one second?’
Ok, lets think about them for a second. They were brutally murdered in their home. The suspects in the case is their own grandson who was found in their car. A car that was reported stolen by the police after their murder. Their grandson said he borrowed the car to go to a family reunion in WY. Was it actually stolen? The owners are decease so we don’t know. Being in the car in another state is not an admission of guilt. It could have very well been borrowed. So far that is just speculation.
Their grandson also had a male friend and a female friend (maybe a girlfriend) in the car. The female friend is the one who said the two males smoked 6 packs per day. Again, just speculation. Doesn’t mean she knows their habits and consumption accurately. Only a drug test or the guys saying how much. The two males pointed the finger at each other of who murdered the grandparents. Again, that doesn’t mean a confession or admission of guilt. People confess to crimes all the times based on interrogators tactics these days. For all we know the grandson and friend didn’t murder them and were only at the residence to borrow the car.
Driving the opposite direction of WY. Still, not an admission of guilt. I have gotten lost on the highway before and had to turn around. There is an exit in Texas where the off ramp is on the LEFT side of the road. Weird as hell, and I miss it all the time. Also, aren’t gas stations few an far between in that area of the country. Where it is likely you may need sometime 10 miles outside of a town and have to loop around at that moment or wait another 50 or so miles for another town?
SSS- Like you said, the details of the story is trickling out. I always assume police are idiots trying to find anybody as soon as possible. Doesn’t mean they find the right people. Also, there is no proof these guys were actually smoking synthetic pot that particular day. Just the girl who was with them said they had a habit.
All drugs,recreational and prescribed should be illegal and violators promptly incarcerated , because no sober person ever commits a crime or murder …..I blame my keyboard for this thought.
flash,
amen, +1000
@ harry
I blame the scary black assault keyboard…
Again, attempting to express remorse over the internet is an exercise in futility, no matter what I always sound like a douchebag.
If one of my family offed my grandparents in such a fashion, I’d feel compelled to “keep it in the family,” and let justice be done.
As for trying to link K2 and Mary-J….seriously man? From the same damned wiki source where you got your info on spice:
“Synthetic” is considered a misnomer, because the ingredients contained in these products are mimics, not copies of THC.[3]
Mimics. Not copies. At a molecular level a few changes here or there make a big difference. These designer drugs are meant to mimic the feel-goods generated by THC, but are not synthetic THC (which has been developed).
Frankly its kind of embarrassing that you tried to use this case to further your own anti-marijuana agenda. Like Feinstein and Sandy Hook.
TPC applies the coup de grace to SSS and his drug rant.
SSS – ur a fucking idiot, while this is a tragic story, spice and marijuana are completely different. To try to say someone does something stupid while high on spice and then try to blame it on marijuana is just plain ignorant. You are completely showing your ass and shitting all over your own point at the same time.
I have tried spice and I have friends who tried it as they get drug tested for their job. It’s a horrible disgusting fake drug and all it does is give you a headache. You literally cannot smoke more than one hit without feeling completely out of your mind. If these guys were smoking that much spice then yes they were completely out of their mind. That drug should absolutely be banned it is just as bad as bath salts.
However, I have friends that are professionals, who smoke weed on a daily basis and function at a high level, do well in their jobs, raise families and go to church.
Get off of your fucking high horse you clown, why the fuck do you think you have the right to tell someone like that what they can and can’t put into their own bodies? Seriously go fuck yourself.
I absolutely despise people like you, you fucking statist wanna be pig. I bet you drink a bottle of scotch a night and then have the nerve to tell people who don’t want to ruin their liver that they don’t have a right to smoke something that grows naturally and gives you a mellow high.
You need to seriously reevaluate your position on this because you are dead wrong.
And yes to the first response, if it wasn’t illegal then these scumbags would not invent a product like spice that is worse than cocaine and crack combined.
I have no problem with you saying that spice is a horrible drug and responsible for these deaths but to make the leap in logic to blame weed because it is supposedly a synthetic version of this drug.
It’s not, it’s not even close. Why don’t you try to get all your facts straight before making such a stupid comment and coming to an even dumber conclusion.
Oh and go fuck yourself, or did I already say that?
“If this article can’t make you stop and THINK, then nothing will.” —–SSS
Can you be any more condescending to the readers / posters here? Just because people don’t agree with you, doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking about the story.
.
“These dumbfucks don’t know shit from Shinola about drugs.” —– SSS
More condescension. Many of us here, like myself, are former pot smokers. Some, I am sure, have done harder stuff.
.
“You add nothing to the dialogue about illegal drugs, fuckhead. Nothing.” —— SSS
And what NEW info have you added? You use a tragedy to push your agenda, while coming to the wrong conclusion that marijuana was the cause.
.
Fine. I read that the perps drove a 2004 Buick. I think we need to ban Buicks. Especially 2004’s. Really.
nice rant jj3, (that might be the angriest comment I have ever read of yours, very nice)
between your and flash’s comments SSS is probably stewing right now. his position has been steadfast on this as long as i have been here (I respect his tenacity but deplore the stupidity). not sure why he posted it on a site like this and expecting to “turn” people to his stance. people semi-regulary post in favor
too many people have focused on drugs good vs drugs bad when the question about drugs is actually a question of self-ownership. if a person believes he/she has the right or authority to dictate what another person puts or doesn’t put into your body they are declaring you a slave and them a slave owner. you are the property of the state and you can’t be allowed to destroy the state’s property, it is tyranny 101.
declarations like that is why the 2nd amendment is so important.
SSS after another foray into TBP journalism. I can’t wait for your next post about the hidden benefits of Fukushima.
The hit squad saved SS and Medicare millions. These thugs have since been hired by the IRS, Obamacare division, and placed on the “death panel” squad in charge of offing geezers who serve no useful purpose on this planet any longer.
There are news stories from coast to coast of grandparents having been murdered by a grandchild.
If you’re a grandparent, arm yourself. Especially if you happen to have a drug-using and/or mentally unstable grandchild.
Seriously.
AWD
So Erskin and Louise Fulgham are old geezers serving no useful purpose and you celebrate their death because it saved money?
Your callousness knows no bounds. I think you are mentally disturbed. Not that you care, but my respect for you is approaching zero.
Wow. This got ugly.
Good job tree climbing shit slingers. =)
The hit squad saved SS and Medicare millions -AWD
And what do you think it will cost to keep these morons in detention?
You have just limboed under the absurd bar and leaped into pit of sociopathy.
Doctor my ass.
@harry p. – “too many people have focused on drugs good vs drugs bad when the question about drugs is actually a question of self-ownership. if a person believes he/she has the right or authority to dictate what another person puts or doesn’t put into your body they are declaring you a slave and them a slave owner.”
I can’t take such a wide stance on drugs unfortunately. History repeats, and if we truly cut the drug monster loose I’ve little doubt that another Opium War would eventually happen.
There are hardcore drugs out there that turn their users into absolute slaves. Its just as important to recognize that as it is to recognize a ‘benign’ drug for what it is.
The pros and cons of cannabis use have been exhaustively research and reported upon. While both sides of the aisle paint a biased picture in their favor, some facts certainly stand out:
1) It is nowhere near as addictive (physiologically) as nicotine or caffeine, two widely used and generally accepted narcotics.
2) At the molecular level its active compound (THC) is safer than the active compound in tobacco (nicotine).
3) It has been demonstrated repeatedly to no more or less harmful than other drugs found in common everyday usage, either over the counter drugs, prescriptions, or otherwise.
Opiates? Amphetamines? Designer drugs?
In some cases I’m on the fence, on others (opiates) I’m for their strict control.
Just like education or healthcare, a “one size fits all” approach to drug control is fucktardedly stupid.
Wide open arms are just as foolish as zero tolerance policies.
Stuck
When I make a sarcastic comment, do I actually have to spell out the word “S-A-R-C-A-S-M?”
I hope not. I was making a joke on Obamacare, which will be ending more lives of the elderly than 10,000 groups of thugs whacked out on synthetic weed, bath salts, PCP, meth, crack, Colt malt liquor, or any other substance used to escape reality and welfare dependence.
I might remind those whipped into a frenzy here of actual death rates:
Nicotine abuse: 360,000 deaths a year
Obesity: 340,000 deaths a year
Alcohol abuse: 40,000 deaths a year
Illegal drugs: 12,000 deaths a year
Try to keep things in perspective. By 2015, Obesity will overtake smoking/nicotine as the #1 cause of death in the USSA.
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As an aside, I love Katey Cuoco. I have since she first popped up on 8 Simple Rules with John Ritter.
@AWD – Unless you are trying to make the case that food as a drug, you are also making yourself out to be a Feinstein.
All we need now is SAH to show up and turn it into a Boomer debate, then we’ll have everyone’s favorite peccadilloes in one grand unrelated thread.
This story is a good reminder that humans are inherently violent and that society and family are the only things keeping SOME of us in line.
This isn’t a new phenomena, anyone else remember, “…Lizzy Borden took an axe and gave her father 40 whacks…”?
People have been BRUTALLY murdering people for our entire existence.
Blaming it on a substance – no matter the substance, unless it 100% alters your brain to the point of becoming a different person – is nothing but bullshit.
What drug did Lizzy Borden blame the murders on?
The guy that went crazy in Michigan back at the turn of the last century and killed his family and nearly every school age child in an entire county wasn’t using drugs.
I am sick to fucking death of people trying to EXCUSE human behavior and blame it on a substance.
This shit AIN’T new and DOESN’T require any thought.
Prohibition has NEVER ACCOMPLISHED any societal good, only good for the likes of SSS, his fellow pensioners, the future pensioners and the ever-strengthening mob/crime syndicates and they all keep pushing their Puritanical bullshit as a solution.
Fucking sheep come in all colors of the voting booth.
Fools, keep thinking that Ronnie Reagan was right and it was the “drugs’ fault” his little spoiled fucking brats were worthless.
I hate to sound callous, but here is the truth, what in the FUCK did these people help to create that would allow a family member to do something like this?
My family is FILLED with drug users (lots of my cousins have had problems with harder drugs than Mary Jane), and not fucking ONE of them has EVER committed a violent crime.
Quit allowing SCUM to alleviate their own blame with your personal satisfaction of controlling the world.
It isn’t the fucking drugs, it IS the POS human scum.
Whatever, SSS you provide me with proof that your generation is to blame for MOST of our current gubment overreach.
Your beliefs and philosophies have been destroying this country for multi-generations and I’m sure will help finish us off soon.
My father, like you, blames the brown people, blames the drugs, blames the prostitutes, but never, ever, accepts that humans are primarily POS with base instincts that some never learn to control and that fucking LAWS don’t STOP criminal behavior. Not now, not EVER.
Bomb away, poison away, nuke away, just for fuck’s sake NEVER EVER smoke a fucking evil joint, that hurts people.
Your hypocrisy is both amusing and sad to me.
Thanks for sharing this but I’m not afraid of the drug-users (no matter which one they are using) because the odds of my being killed by either a cop, or a doctor, so far exceed the odds of this happening that I can’t even be bothered to worry about it.
Want to protect the weak? Fucking ARM THEM and teach them how to shoot to defend themselves. The rest is just worthless words and more copfuks to destroy the innocents’ lives.
Food is a drug.
Eating fat triggers dopamine release in the brain similar to cocaine
When you eat, your stomach stretches, causing opiate release much like heroin.
Your fat cells release endocannibinoids, natural marijuana into your system.
Any drug, legal or illegal, is already being made in your body, otherwise you would not have evolved with a receptor for it. Drugs like alcohol work on neurotransmitter systems to cause dis-inhibition. And like any drug, people build up tolerances to food, and must take ever increasing “doses” to cause the same effect.
Criminalization allows chaos, control and corruption – 2 things Fed fuckfaces love. The Drug War and this sort of solipsistic drivel as posted by SSS allows major Federal thugs to operate: DEA (obvious); CIA (arming foreign drug producers, providing transportation, protection, etc and bringing the drugs right onto US streets, while using this system to also press foreign drug producers for intel); DHS; FBI; FDA; NIH; ATF; military style arming of Police; Wars; Special Military Operations around the globe; Federal Prisons; etc.
Our fucking Federal Government and its cronies both lobby for strict criminalization and demo nation of drugs; simultaneously they import the drugs, arm the drug lords, give them CIA planes and fly the drugs right in; then that keeps the FBI, DEA, Police, ATF, DHS; Prisons; etc nice and busy with bigger and bigger budgets and more chaos and control. Then the CIA and their buddies in the military can go carry out ops against rival drug producers and snipe a few side enemies in the process and have “drug” reasons to go meddle in foreign affairs…. Meanwhile they cooperate with their own drug producers to bring literally tons of cocaine, heroin, meth and other drugs into the US and dump them in the streets. (Thus keeping all their other Fed buddies über employed). And round, and round it goes. Operative like SSS propagate scientific falsehoods and make blind appeals to emotion “oh the dangers, the horrors, the dead grandparents”. They need to keep the Drug War going. But they also need to keep losing, never actually win. They want Criminalization, Chaos; Control; Corruption. Repeat ad infinitum. Aren’t you retired, SSS? You can stop with your asinine CIA drug propaganda bullshit. Seriously. We are all adults here. Lets cut the bullshit. You and your homies want to control the drug trade with no competitors. You also want it to stay criminalized in order to excuse selective violence and imprisonments against US Citizens and foreign nationals – but, you will selectively punish and also selectively protect other drug users/producers. Most importantly, for all the unscientific misdirection and emotionalism – the CIA (and Fed) will always protect and maintain the drug trade. Illicit, Pharmaceuticals, you name it. The federal gov is the most sophisticated drug trade organization in Earth history.
Here is what happens when you decriminalize: http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html
AWD
OK.
I missed the sarcasm aspect.
I lose most of my mental acuity when our half-Neegro-In-Charge spews his bullshit to the U.N.
+1,000 to TeresaE’s post @11:37 ….. obliterating SSS’s pathetic arguments in every paragraph.
Hey, girl … where’s that magnesium info??
I’ve tried Spice. It’s nothing like the real thing. Synthetics are nasty.
“The guy that went crazy in Michigan back at the turn of the last century and killed his family and nearly every school age child in an entire county wasn’t using drugs.”
Oh thank you. I had written before that my great aunt and uncle were in the building at the time of that bombing. Even 86 years later the community still has the same conclusion. That Kehoe was a lunatic. There was an investigation and that was their findings. He was just crazy. I still have plenty of family documents about the bombing. Definitely interesting to see the stark contrast of the reaction then and the reaction now. America is really odd today. We have to figure out every detail and blame something. Not that crazy people do crazy shit. Nope, what was his motives? Was he hugged enough as a child? Did he used to wet the bed as a child? Did his parents not let him watch Mister Rogers and Sesame Street as a child? This pop psychology of a culture we have now is annoying.
Great thread!!
Tylenol works on cannabinoid receptor for whatever that’s worth.
“From your description you mean just about anything our body does. Neurotransmitter? DRUGS! Hormone? DRUGS! Pulled muscle? DRUGS!”
Your body is a storehouse of drugs. They’re still discovering endogenous drugs made by the body.
Osteopathic and homeopathic medicine tries to use your endogenous drug system for benefit. Unfortunately, the mind is stronger than the body. Most people are neurotic, anxious, depressed, delusional, brainwashed, programmed, and otherwise mentally unhealthy and unstable. This causes release of destructive chemicals like cortisol, epinephrine, and other stress hormones which cause a cascade resulting in compulsive and addictive eating and drug takiing. Our society has a mental disease(s), consumerism. Go to where people are actually happy, like Africa. The poorer they are, they happier they are. I’ve seen it around the globe.
AWD,
I don’t know why you have to pick on us Colt – 45 drinkers, although I prefer a couple of 24oz Steel Reserves after a long hard day of watching Judge Judy and playing GTA5.
Bob.
“Your body is a storehouse of drugs. They’re still discovering endogenous drugs made by the body.”
You give drugs the broadest definition I’ve ever seen in my life, and that includes the dirty hippy down the block who still smokes banana peels for his high.
“Go to where people are actually happy, like Africa. The poorer they are, they happier they are. I’ve seen it around the globe.”
Now this I’ll agree with. American consumerism destroys more lives than any drug ever could.
“Eating fat triggers dopamine release in the brain similar to cocaine”
So does a blowjob, I don’t see you trying to outlaw those.
For that matter, so does the image of boobies.”
I see the disgusting results of people eating their weight in fat. Considering the number of blowjobs I get, and the number of “hot” titties, not the kind hanging off chicks whose bellies are bigger than their boobs, or moobs; I’m all for blowjobs, and Kate Upton.
SAH, you said you were depressed and you didn’t care anymore..Now you.want to legalize drugs .I think you are a typical woman who doesn’t know what you are ,want or believe.But don’t worry I still have a fantasy or two about you.ha ha.
Keep coming back to the BP .You can always get a good laugh at the stupid shit I say.
Damn I was going to comment but JJ pretty much nailed it.
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$100 that they were on SSRIs (or suffering withdrawl thereof), like damn near all of the mass shooters in the last 20 years.
“$100 that they were on SSRIs (or suffering withdrawl thereof), like damn near all of the mass shooters in the last 20 years.”
—-Varnelius
Although off topic, Varnelius said something sensible. Rare in this fucked up thread.
SSS on the course this morning after getting his ass handed to him by the TBP drug crazed shit throwing monkeys.
@SSS – “Will legalizing drugs make those costs and crimes go away?Anyone wanna tackle that issue?”
For marijuana? I’m assuming the cost will go down as the number of inmates will go down. I’m assuming the cost will go down as we spend an exorbitant amount of money turning local police into paramilitary forces just so they can deal with potheads.
I’m also assuming the amount of prescription painkillers killing people will go down as people opt to take the (assumed) cheaper marijuana route rather than going through Obamacare to get some $500/pill feel-goods.
I’m assuming that (assuming its regulated similarly to alcohol) it will actually generate revenue as pot-dispensaries open up, farmers switch over to selling cannabis from tobacco in their free space, and people buy a product that has been proven effective over the last millenia.
The only criminal aspect to marijuana is the drug cartels that control the flow of the drug. Legalizing it means that the scarcity of the product will no longer drive the price, but the demand. The demand is known (its high) and this is an easily grown product so (much like beer) one can only assume weed would be cheap and readily available.
Please, enlighten me with your super-secret CIA files as to how legalizing marijuana is the end of all things.
I wasn’t going to comment on the legal/illegal argument going on in this thread, but I put my floaties on and will venture into the pool.
For years I had the opinion that they should legalize pot, tax it, and dedicate that tax revenue to continuing to fight the war on the harder drugs (cocaine heroin, meth, etc).
Now days, (since my libertarian awakening) I think they should just legalize them all. If someone wants to earn a darwinian award for getting into meth, bath salts, or whatever, have at it hoss. There will be more for everyone else once they’re gone.
Slap some warning labels on em, like cancer sticks.
@varnelius –
” There will be more for everyone else once they’re gone.”
Have you ever read of the Opium Wars? Loosen the restrictions on opiates and you will see a whole new hell unleashed on the streets.
Some drugs are a threat to national security. Marijuana is not just one of them. Drugs should be approved on a case-by-case basis, not wholesale.
Use your fucking brain.
Paying the millions of cops, local, country, state and Federal, the incarceration costs, legal fees, judges, lawyers, millions of bureaucrats, jails, prisons, the ruined lives, the innocent children, all because of drugs, which the government has been utterly unable to prevent or otherwise slow the flow and distribution of. Trillions of dollars wasted. And pharmaceutical drugs kill 10x more people every year than illegal drugs. Like Nancy Reagan said “Just say no”, it works for SSS, it’ll work for everyone.
Meanwhile, at the most toothless place on earth:
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This isn’t nearly as shocking as when I found out they sold vegetables at Wal-Mart.
TPC, I took your advice and read the entirety of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
I don’t get your point one bit. A bunch of people died because of people sticking their noses in others business. In the end China legalized the opium, however the British would have never been bringing it there in the first place if there wasn’t such a severe trade imbalance.
Please explain, we let people take vicodin et al every day.
About 750,000 arrests for marijuana possession each year. I cannot imagine a greater waste of resources other than almost anything else the government gets involved in. Between the processing of these arrests and the permanent records for many of the young people who so frequently get caught, it serves no useful purpose.
My 17 year old daughter has told me that access to any drug at her very nice suburban high school is completely unrestricted. You can get anything illegal or prescription that you are looking for with a quick phone call or text. She tells me that it would be a much shorter list of kids that don’t do drugs than are actually doing them. Fortunately my kids have seen fit not to experiment with drugs as there dad had in high school and college.
TPC you will appreciate this. My son is taking 5 Chemical Engineering courses this semester (Junior year), a cruel scheduling trick of the university in order to get kids to have to take extra semesters. He has little time for drugs or drinking and thus far has not partaken in them. Quite a different time from when I went to UMass in 1980 and the president of our fraternity was a Chem E major. Of course in 1980 there weren’t cameras and cell phones with cameras everywhere and with one phone call you could have a dozen kegs delivered to your fraternity without a permit.
Bob
Bostonbob
You need to put your Keynesian hat on. The 750,000 arrests for marijuana keep thousands of union prison guards gainfully employed. It keeps thousands of union donut eaters employed processing, tasering, and intimidating youngsters. Think of all the donuts that pays for.
If we legalize pot, the economy would collapse. Of course the donut eaters could be reassigned to giving out traffic tickets for non-violations by the sheep.
Good point Admin, I hadn’t had time to grow out my Krugman beard and take my Keynesian laxative so I could shit out some BLS statistics that show we are in a drug induced recovery.
Bob.
@varnellius – Drugs that are supremely addictive as well as controlling of their user (the “numbing” quality of opium) are dangerous. They use the user, and its not a matter of self-control, your body will force you to become enslaved to the stuff, posthaste. The British weaponize a drug during the Opium Wars, and used its not out of the realm of possibility that another nation may one day do something similar with another mind-control drug.
You see a suppression of rights. I see common sense. All drugs were not created equal, just as all weapons weren’t created equal.
For example, I am a strong proponent of the second amendment, to the point that I think if a private citizen can afford an Abrams main battle tank, they would be able to have one.
That doesn’t mean I think chemical weapons and nukes should be available to every citizen.
Mary-J is like an automatic weapon. Opium is like napalm.
@Bostonbob – I never understood how people were able to enjoy college. It was pure unadulterated hell for both me and my wife. There was no fun to be had. To pay our way we both worked full time, and because our parents were “middle class” we got zero financial help.
Both of us qualified for damn near full ride academic scholarships, but lost them almost immediately because (surprise surprise) things were still too expensive. We had to have jobs to pay for gas, books and other school supplies. Jobs meant not being able to devote our full attention to our degrees, we both lost our scholarships (had to maintain a 3.8 GPA, not easy to do in chemistry) which of course increased the amount of money we had to shell out each semester, causing us to work more hours.
Luckily we both worked at the hospital, and were able to work all available nights/holidays in order to pay our way. I didn’t see my family for 5 years straight because I couldn’t afford to come back to see them, and they weren’t able to help financially (though if guilt was a currency, they would have been Bernanke’ing up the place).
As for the extra semesters trick, I got caught up in that one as well. I was faced with the option of actually completing my BioChemistry and Molecular Biology degree (with a minor in microbiology) or taking the much less impressive sounding “Natural Sciences Chemistry – Health” degree….which was usually reserved for failed medschool students.
I fell one class short of the “impressive” degree and ended up with the other scrubs. I could have stuck around for another year and a half to get the impressive one, but thanks to how ridiculous the course load was, I was almost to the limit I could have of “degree-less” credit hours and still get financial aid.
The system if a fucking joke these days. Tell your boy to keep his nose to the grindstone, and graduate ASAP, college fucking sucks but being in your 20s with some money in your pocket and school behind you feels fucking fantastic. As a ChemE he will always have job openings, hell maybe he could get one for a company traveling the world. I know many a ChemE who have gone on to be an inspector and get to jet set all over the place.
@Admin – As a pure Keynsian, you know I have to agree with you. In fact, I think we should outlaw all food next, as 100% of doctors in this thread have claimed food is a drug and as we all know…
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There is absolutely no reason to abuse illegal drugs when so many legal ones are available for the asking …and will put you out of your misery a lot sooner.
After surgery, and in extreme pain, my genius MD tells me ” just to up your dosage of of hydrocodone from 3 to 6 a day”…not giving a rats ass about my liver or apparently my life…
FAMDITAWARF
This hunt is not just an academic exercise. Tylenol is the No. 1 reason for liver failure in America today – not because people are knowingly taking an overdose, but because they are being unwittingly exposed to acetaminophen from a variety of sources over a long period of time. The Tylenol people have done a great job of slipping their product into a myriad of commonly used drugs.
Instead of Lortab or other combination pain killers, I routinely give my patients plain Codeine after surgery, but until I specifically asked for it, my local pharmacy had no common prescription narcotic painkiller without Tylenol. Generally, pain medicine given post-op contains Tylenol.
For some major insight into the Wall Street /CIA/Prison Industry /Section 8 housing connection read this:
http://www.dunwalke.com/introduction.htm
Dillon Read & Co. Inc. & the Aristocracy of Prison Profits
by Catherine Austin Fitts
It’s a long read , but worth the time…promise.
Huff Post article, September 2012
In Washington, a 25 percent excise tax would be in place if the state passes Initiative 502 (comment: it did), which state revenue experts say could generate as much as $1.9 billion over the next five years, The Seattle Times reported. If passed, the initiative would allow adults 21 and older to buy up limited amounts of marijuana or marijuana-infused food products and would create state-licensed growers and retailers.
The Associated Press reports that if Washington’s I-502 passes:
•Public use or display of marijuana would be barred.
•No marijuana facilities could be located near schools, day cares, parks or libraries.
•Employers would still be able to fire workers who test positive for pot.
•It would remain illegal to privately grow marijuana for recreational use, though medical patients could still grow their own or designate someone to grow it for them.
•It would be illegal to drive with more than 5 nanograms of THC, the active ingredient of cannabis, per milliliter of blood, if the driver is over 21; for those under 21, there would be a zero tolerance policy.
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Here are the laughing points. $1.9 billion revenue for the state is a fucking dream world. Washington will likely LOSE money trying to set up and run this fool’s errand. A 25% state excise tax will surely drive cost of pot DOWN, won’t it? The state-controlled pot price will surely BEAT the price of pot offered by those operating outside the state system, won’t it (and those operating outside the system are already in place)?
“No marijuana facilities could be located near schools, day cares, parks or libraries.” Heh. That’s where you’ll find the illegal pot dealers. There and any street/house of their choice. Double heh.
“It would remain illegal to privately grow marijuana for recreational use.” Illegal pot networks could care less. They’ll continue to grow it, transport it, and sell it on a commercial scale. And they’ll sell it for far less than any system the stupid Washington state government can come up with.
Big bonus: legalizing pot in Washington state and Colorado WILL create jobs. More government drones sucking money out of the state treasuries to pay their salaries and benefits. You can bet the farm that Colorado and Washington will NOT include this huge bureaucratic cost once this so-called golden goose of revenue from marijuana starts laying lead eggs.
All this goes over the heads of people like TPC, whose assumptions on legalizing marijuana match the people who came up with Obamacare and told us it would drive health care costs DOWN.
What happened to the price of booze after prohibition? The same thing would happen with pot. Making a product more difficult to supply will increase its price.
TPC “Drugs that are supremely addictive as well as controlling of their user (the “numbing” quality of opium) are dangerous. They use the user, and its not a matter of self-control, your body will force you to become enslaved to the stuff, posthaste.”
Like, umm, tobacco? And that doesn’t even give that ‘numbing’ quality, just some synapse expansion.
“The British weaponize a drug during the Opium Wars, and used its not out of the realm of possibility that another nation may one day do something similar with another mind-control drug.”
Don’t you mean that they weaponized it prior to the Opium wars? And even if so, soaking tobacco is “weaponization”? Doesn’t that make synthetic marijuana weaponized? Even funnier, damn near all of the synthetic pot raw chemicals are produced in China. Guess the East is getting its revenge on the West.
I still don’t get how you feel you can dictate to others what they choose (or not) to put into their own bodies.
Hell, even require a prescription for recreational drugs. With Obamacare on the way we’ll all be covered soon, right? Then at least your recreation can be monitored.
Even with the legal drugs, people still abuse them. Ever heard of people grinding up Wellbutrin and injecting it in their skin? Legal or not, there are plenty of idiots out there who will do whatever they want regardless of the consequences.
Re-reading Wikipedia, “It was not until the 17th century that the practice of mixing opium with tobacco for smoking was introduced into China by Europeans.”
That really doesn’t say who came up with the idea of mixing opium with tobacco so it could be smoked. I suspect that this mixture was done in the opium dens themselves, and not shipped that way across the ocean. In those days air tight containers were not in plentiful supply, and it would have been far easier to have shipped the powdered opium and tobacco separately, even if they were originating in the same location (India is implied). There aren’t enough facts either from you or from wikipedia to know the ultimate historical progression.
(I can tell you from my experience with synthetic marijuana, keeping it in an air-tight container is the only way to keep it even remotely fresh. Leaving a half smoked pipe out overnight led to effectively smoking oregano in the morning.)
I’m actually surprised its taken so long for this to start getting nationwide attention (RT America even had a piece on it today). Living in Superior, WI; Jim Carlson who operates the “Last Place on Earth” in Duluth, MN has been the poster boy for federal law enforcement. He is under trial right now in Federal court in Minneapolis, MN. Google him, I’m sure there’s plenty of information out there on his case.