Is weed consumption prevalent in PA, or what?
 

This is from Fox news, but i didn't figure anyone would mind for this story.


Top Cop Smokes Pot
Thursday, October 07, 2004

Cops in the small eastern Pennsylvania town of Weatherly had been complaining for months about the smell of marijuana smoke in the office, the pot pipes lying around, the seized drugs that disappeared.

On Wednesday, their chief of 10 years, Brian S. Cara, was arrested by state troopers, reports The Morning Call of Allentown.

"I was really shocked to find out everything he was supposed to have done," Weatherly Mayor Joseph E. D'Andrea told the newspaper. "If he has had problems and needed help, we could have helped him."

The borough of 2,600 people, about midway between Wilkes-Barre and Allentown, has three full-time and six part-time police officers.

Cara, 38, did not immediately return a phone message left at his home.

State Attorney General Jerry Pappert said the probe started in Sept. 2003 when Weatherly cops told state authorities suspicious things had been disappearing for months.

There were the plastic envelopes of cocaine that mysteriously "exploded" after having been placed in the evidence locker — an unlocked drawer.



There were the times when cops showed up unexpectedly at the station only to find Cara there alone and the place reeking of pot smoke.

There were the joints and pot pipes cops noticed in Cara's desk drawer.

Finally, a "reverse sting" was set up this summer. On Aug. 2, one of Weatherly's officers told Cara that two ounces of pot had been seized and were in the office.

Also new to the office was a hidden video camera.

State drug agents told a grand jury they watched Cara smoke some of the pot later that same day, then go back for more no less than eight times on Aug. 3. All of it was caught on videotape.

On Aug. 4, it all came down. Cara was seen smoking pot five times before 9:15 a.m. Then he packed a pipe, tucked it into his pocket and went out on patrol.

Later that day, state agents with a warrant searched his desk and found drugs and drug paraphernalia.

Cara was made to undergo a blood test, which came back positive for marijuana, and he allegedly admitted smoking pot from the evidence locker.

He was immediately placed on paid suspension, but the paychecks may end following his formal arrest.

"We're not his judge and jury, but we can't continue paying him and filling in for him at his salary," D'Andrea said.

Cara was charged with four misdemeanors: obstructing justice, criminal attempt to obstruct justice, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

He was booked and released on his own recognizance. His first preliminary hearing was scheduled for Nov. 17.

Guess the adage is true: Cops got the best dope. :joint:

I've heard that some officers dispose of smaller amounts (defined as enough to see, but not enough to justify the paperwork, but possibly enough to get some youngin' to give up the name of his supplier) by tossing it into a river that they have handy.

Let's see how long it takes for one of those cop drama show ala Law And Order to pick up this story and work it into one of their episodes...if they haven't already. Sounds like some good TV drama fodder to me.

When my husband was a department manager for a local grocery chain, he caught one of his employees with a joint, which he confiscated but kept. That was the first time I smoked pot, and was so terrified of getting caught and kicked out of grad school :worried: it wasn't even any fun. Damn conscience.

well, i can tell you, over here in Belgium its like nowhere else! About 10 years ago i was rollin a good one, in a private boys-club , and police came in, it was a guy ive known a bit before he was a cop...well he took the jay before the other cop was in and told me " thanks" Well, at least i didnt get a ticket! haha

Using drugs is not a crime. Creating laws against using drugs is a crime. Police, judges, politicians, and everyone else knows the drug war is a miserable failure, because you can't legislate appetite, and you any laws that try to ban a peaceful activity like drug use only undermine any respect the legal system might still have.

This cop should not be in trouble at all.

There's a disconnect between what the laws are now, and what you think the laws should be ... work to get the laws changed, if that's what you feel is appropriate.

Until then, the top cop shouldn't be bogeyin' the doob on the county's dime.

Radar, using drugs is a crime! Like almost everywhere in the word, it still is illegal! In Netherlands u can just smoke some pot without being arrested, and jamaica maybe! I think that any kind off drug or other stuff that can harm u , should be illegal! Cause in the end, there were study' s enough to proove that it aint healthy and u can get serious problems because of it! I smoke a long time without any side-effects but ive seen people go crazy! And i wouldnt wanna be like that! I dont know if any sane person would wanna be sick! With the harder drugs it is even wurse...paranoia, suicide etc. Some people do need it , and for those people i wish it was legal... And than u have the users-for-pleasure...it can make u smile, make u eat, make u experience music differently....but overdo it , and all off that goes away and your left with misery!

Heroine is probably the most destructive recreational drug. Since heroine addicts most often are not 'cured' in their first drug therapy, then we make the victim into a criminal. Extremist conservative then say rehabilitation cannot work. One successful program for heroine addicts is heroine maintenance. They get a small daily dose which is usually enough to keep them productive and alive. But this is contrary to a political right wing agenda that says all drugs (except those who make campaign contributions) are evil. So yes, there is a major disconnect between drug laws and reality. When a mariguana user can get mandatory sentences equivalent to murder. Yes, there is a major disconnect between those making the laws and reality.

:smack: drugs are neither evil nor good. They just are what they are. The most destructive drug is alcohol and it's perfectly legal to buy and use that-providing you are of legal age.

Is weed consumption prevalent in PA, or what?

um... duh :blunt:

Until then?

Dont know about PA, but back in Bolton in the North of England my Ex was once offered a joint during his driving lesson by his driving instructor.

There's always a good apple in every barrel. :cool:

:) very funny

Bypassing your inability to spell "heroin" ...

First off, maintenance programs are nowhere near as successful as you seem to believe. Whether you provide maintenance doses of heroin itself or of the best-known heroin analog, methadone, you've still got an addiction. An addiction, incidentally, to a substance that requires higher and higher doses to get the same level of satisfaction from over time. The cravings are still there, and so are the withdrawal symptoms. Cramps. Sweats. Nausea. Chills.

It's like the hole in the water skin example ... you can keep pouring water into the skin with a hole in it, but by doing so, the hole becomes larger, and so you have to add the water at a faster and faster rate, until you reach the point at which the outflow is equal to the inflow.

Rehabilitation can work, but requires a strength of character that often, had the junkie had it from the get-go, would have kept them from starting use of the drug in the first place.

I see people who relapsed after 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years of sobriety on a variety of drugs and/or alcohol. One of my repeat customers was a drug rehab counsellor, who had 10 years under his belt, and had helped a lot of other people become sober before his own relapse ... talk about a placement problem!! Try to find a rehab for a guy who can't go anywhere local because of the likelihood that he'd be hospitalized along with people that he had treated.

One of my most problematic heroin users was an adolescent girl. She'd started using when she was around 15 or 16 ... I started giving her evaluations to go to rehabs after she turned 18 (there's a different type of eval that I'm not certified in for adolescent placements). I evaluted and placed her at least five times, and I'm not the only professional she had approached. Her parents had taken her to this doctor in New Jersey who has a treatment which is generally very effective ... He places a Narcan implant into the patient's body, usually in the upper arm. Narcan is a heroin antagonist. It stops the drug from working. It's the same stuff that is given in an ER for a heroin OD. Brings you down QUICK. Anyway, the implant is surgically placed deep in the upper arm. This chick ripped the Narcan implant out of her arm.

Twice.

As far as the "most destructive drug" I'm going to have to vote for crack cocaine.

$1000/day crack habits are commonplace. $1000/day of heroin is rare, and for most people, fatal. Even the real stone heroin junkies rarely do more than a bundle a day, with most of them around the 4-5 bags a day IV level.

How many bags in a bundle? :confused:

how many bundles in a peck?

Ten

As someone who has gone through methadone treatment (and if this wasn't an anonymous internet message board, you can bet your ass you'd never hear me admit to it), I have mixed feelings about it. I was lucky enough to get a regualr doctor to prescribe it for me rather than going through a clinic. He had been treating me with Neurontin and extremely high doses of Librium, which did nothing but make me sleep constantly and feel even more depressed. At my next appointment I took him the huge bottle of Librium (there were over 400 capsules in it as I was taking 16 a day) and told him I was going to the methadone clinic. He became very upset, and told me I had no business in "that place" with "that kind" of people (he and my dad are buddies), and offered to prescribe it for me himself. I did 80 mg. a day for about 6 months, and weaned myself off it.
Coming off the methadone was FAR WORSE than coming off any other opiates, and my experience with them is far-reaching, long-lived and quite varied. I have never felt worse in my life than trying to quit that shit. Even though a two-week script was just $13 without using my prescription card (the doctor advised me not to use it and to go to a different pharmacy than I normally used), I found myself saving the scripts and buying the methadone for $10 a pill from a neighbor who was disabled due to a back injury who got it for pain. I knew if I had a brand-new shiny bottle of 54-142's, I'd be empty in a day or two. Buying it illegally made it easier for me to quit, even with my own prescription. My sinuses are completely shot forever from all the crap I put in them, and I'm lucky I didn't die.

As for the cop, meh. He just got caught. There are scores of others just like him who don't get caught. Smoking 5 times by breakfast sounds more like OCD than someone who likes to get high though.

Thanks for sharing that with us Jane. I have a couple of friends who have had to make recourse to methadone programmes in recent years. Getting off an addictive substance is never easy, regardless of which method is used. I have a great deal of admiration for those who do it. Indeed I have admiration for those that try as well. Hell, quitting tobacco is hard enough to give me pause.

Replacing an addiction with another, less fun addiction, particularly one that still allows you to continue use of the addictive substance you're trying to get off of in the first place never made any real sense to me.

On further reflection, this now seems like something I shouldn't have brought up even on anonymous message board. Even so, here we are.

Wolf, for me the methadone was my favorite. Even before I had my own script I would do it if I could get it. It wasn't less fun to me - it was more fun. It felt more like smack than anything else, and it kept me from getting sick for a day and a half. One of the main reasons I wanted to go on the methadone was that with my own script, it was certainly cheaper than the 300-400 mg. of pain pills I was taking.

I hear you about replacing one addiction with another. Methadone can be extremely dangerous. I know several people who have ODed on it, and several who have died. But for many people, it has been a lifesaver. It is possible to start taking it and never stop. I was scared of that happening to me. I knew if I wanted to take it indefinitely, there was no reason why I couldn't. That's what prompted me to wean myself off it. But I know that without it I'd not be where I am today.

You may have stopped using, but you didn't stop behaving like a junkie. You were getting meds either illegally (from friends who got them also) or from a doctor who was writing script under false pretenses ... primary/family care docs can write for methadone for pain under some circumstances, but aren't licensed for detox. In AA such folks are called "dry drunks." I don't know what the NA equivalent terminology would be.

All that being said, I hope your life is now better, and you remain stable and sober.

My hospital isn't licensed for methadone, but can get it under special circumstances from a local clinic, but the patient has to already be registered with that clinic in order to receive the doses.

I resent you calling what I did to get off opiates "behaving like a junkie". It was the least junkie thing I did for years. I realize that in your line of work you are looking at the situation with a completely different perspective and indeed a completely different reality than the one I have known. Buying 20 mg. a day of methadone for $20 seemed to me a more intelligent decision than picking up a bottle of 1200 mg. for $13. It kept my price high and my quantity low, thereby decreasing my use. And there were absolutely no false pretenses involved in my receiving a prescription from the doctor - he knew the entire story. As far as doctors not being able to prescribe it, I have no idea what the law is, but I do know that he is the one who writes the methadone scripts for the inmates at two local jails. I know he didn't indicate in my records that he was treating me for pain, he indicated it was for addiction, because he had to turn over a copy of my file after we had a car accident and the insurance wanted to settle with us.

Isn't EVERYONE in AA a "dry drunk"? Why would they be there otherwise? Or do you just mean the ones who are bound to relapse because they don't have an affiliation with a "program"? I have a real problem with AA and many 12-step programs. Not everyone has the same needs. Not everyone sees themselves as "powerless" and in need of help from a Higher Power. I read some statistics the other day at my mother-in-law's house in a nursing magazine (she's an RN) about AA and other ways of dealing with addictions, like secular treatments and just going cold turkey. The numbers are all basically the same. I object to the herd mentality of AA, and the sentiment that people can't handle addiction of their own. Obviously not everyone can. Obviously 12-step programs don't work for everyone either, else we wouldn't have junkies and drunks at all. If AA or NA works for some people, that's great. Deciding to quit and taking the necessary steps FOR ME to do so is what it took for me. Your mileage may vary, naturally.

A couple I know joined AA about 4 or 5 months ago. It's working well for them because it gave them a new social circle to hang with and go places with, that don't drink. It would have been much harder, if even possible, to quit if they were hanging with the same old crowd. :)

Does AA actually tout themselves as The Solution for everyone with drinking problems they can't control or do they offer themselves as one solution of many?

Therefore cigarette addicts must consume more cigarettes every year to get the same level of satisfaction?

That was the point of those successful programs in Netherlands and Swizterland. Heroine is an addiction that most will never be cured of. So heroin maintenance using a fixed, small dose, had a near 100% success rate. Another ignored point: with right wing George Jr extremists in power, we could never even perform such clinical experiments. Political rhetoric again being more important than science. Right wing rhetoric says if rehabilitation does not work the first time, then rehabilitiation does not work - which is why we spend many times more money on enforcement and punishment rather than on rehab. Your comments?

To get back on point - are you saying rehabilitation only works a first time or are you saying many must go through rehab as much as three or more times? Clearly rehab does not work because even a drug rehab counsellor fell off the wagon? Or are there real world politicans that want to deal with the fact that many will require multiple episodes of rehab?

Are you saying methadone is more successful because it replaces one addiction with another? Are you saying that crack cocaine addicts 10 out of ten and that heroin only addicts 9 out of ten?

Another fact we know even from the cigarette addiction companies - the earlier a person becomes addicted, then the more addicted they are for life. Cigarette drug pushers had a program to addict 8 year olds. How? They were test marketing nicotene laced candies when the program was uncovered by Hubert Humphrey's Jr, AG for MN. Cigarette drug companies had a program to addict more customers for life because younger addicts are the most problematic.

Yes a heroine addicted 15 year old will always be a problematic case based upon the history of addiction. The younger the addict, then the more likely that addict will 'fall off the wagon'.

Therefore cigarette addicts must consume more cigarettes every year to get the same level of satisfaction?

As a matter of fact, yes. Your point?

The point was a number of questions in the preceeding post that you did not answer. Questions based upon a previous post I did not understand.

Bullshit, shame on you. Did Karl Rove tell you to spread that rumour? :p

Is it me, or did a post about someone smoking mairjuana (albeit copious amounts of it) somehow spiral into a discussion of heroin addiction and alcoholism? I think this illustrates a significant problem with the reality of the war on drugs. Somehow it ends up in a lot of people's heads that pot=acid=coke=h=crack=mdma=psylocibine, and this is simply not true. By lumping a plant like marijuana in with drugs like heroin and crack is to say it is just as likely to destroy/end your life as these drugs. I personally think that occasional, casual use of marijuana is harmless, and even if you disagree, there's no way on earth you can even try to prove that it is as harmful as the aforementioned. Do I want to see 13 year olds smoking pot? Of course not. But I think that if it is within the realm of reasonable control for a consenting adult to use alcohol or (especially) nicotine, how is it not within that same adult's control to use marijuana? So, instead of letting people get a controlled dosage of an enjoyable and minimally harmful chemical within an environment prepared to handle them while they use this chemical, we send them to the streets to get something that isn't guaranteed to even be just pot (though it is the extremely vast majority of the time, simply because most other drugs are so much more expensive) not to mention being able to control the strength of the dosage or consider different cannabinoid blends to try to achieve different types of "high". Then, if you are found to be using this chemical, you end up in prison and with a permanently marred record. It will be difficult for you to get a job, especially if you aren't in college yet, because having a gram of pot in your pocket means that you can't get student aid anymore. One mistake in high school, and not even all that serious of one, and you pay for it for the rest of your life. Marijuana laws are Draconian and completely seperate from the reality of marijuana use. One must remember some of the arguments given to originally criminalize the plant, including that it might "make a black man look twice at a white woman" and could "cause the user to fall under the influence of listening to jazz"*. After I work my ass off all day, why shouldn't I be allowed to smoke a joint, eat a box of twinkies and take a nap? How is that any more harmful than having a few beers and watching TV?

To be honest, if drug laws were truly effective in keeping people from harming themselves, and limited in their scope so as to only be concerned with drugs that could cause significant harm even with casual use, I would support them with every last bit of moral fiber I have. But, in reality, the drug laws are more harmful than most of the drugs themselves, and they prevent these drugs from being used in a safe way by responsible people. Instead, we've returned to the days of gangsters shooting up the streets and people going blind from drinking bathtub gin. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that more people have been killed by competition in the black market for drugs than by the drugs themselves, and rather than eliminate this black market and provide a safe environment for users and help for people with real problems, we continue to fuel the idea that all drugs are evil, horrible things that will inevitably ruin your life. Parents, let me ask you this: What's the quickest way to ensure that your children will go digging through the kitchen cabinet? Tell them they aren't allowed to, and don't tell them why. The "drugs are bad" additude doesn't stop people from using them; instead it fuels curiousity, then breeds mistrust when little Timmy smokes that joint with his friends and finds out that no one got killed, no one got pregnant, and no one ended up having to smoke pot every day just to feel normal. So he starts to wonder if he's been lied to about acid, and he takes it. He doesn't go insane, he doesn't try to fly off of a ten-story balcony, and, in fact, he has a pretty great experience listening to funky music and watching the winamp visualizer. So he wonders if he's been lied to about MDMA, and he takes it. He doesn't have a seizure and choke on his tongue, he doesn't die of dehydration, he doesn't go into a deep depression, and he doesn't end up addicted. So he wonders if he's been lied to about hardcore drugs like coke, opiates, meth, pcp, etc. So he tries one of them, and finds out that this time, he really hasn't been lied to.

We need to foster a culture where knowledge is valued more than abject, baseless fear. We need to be realistic about drugs to ourselves, to each other, and to our children. We need to create an environment where softer drugs like marijuana are considered safe for use in the home, or in more controlled environments outside the home than, say, in the back of some guy you never met before's car in the wal-mart parking lot. For people with chemical dependencies, we need to not make them outcasts and untouchables, and consider them doomed and unable to be helped. Instead, we need to allow them access to treatment and, either if treatment fails or in conjunction with said treatment, a supply of their chemical of choice free from random chemical cuts that you find on the street, and with a regulated dosage that allows them to be weaned off of the chemical, or at least down to a dosage where there is maximum functionality in the addict. To paraphrase from the dextramorphan FAQ, I'd rather see a thousand people do a drug safely than one person injure or kill themselves using a drug, and if they hurt themselves because of lack of non-biased, zero-bullshit information, then I consider myself partially responsible. Just Say Know to Drugs.

That being said, I had an interesting experience flipping through the police blotter a few years back that relates to the original article in this thread. Anyone who went to school in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh in the past 10 years might remember an officer by the name of Andrew McNellis. Officer Andy headed up the D.A.R.E. program in a few schools in our area, and could be counted on at least twice a year to show up and deliver a rousing speech about how, if you smoke pot even once, you'll die penniless in the gutter, face-down in a pool of your own vomit. Well, as it turns out, Officer Andy and Spike, the drug/bomb dog he brought with him, had a lucrative side-business taking weapons and drugs (marijuana and cocaine, according to the police blotter) from the evidence locker and selling them, en masse, to various ne'er-do-wells throughout the Pittsburgh area. Kudos to Officer Andy, for giving me one more story to tell when people ask me why I'm so cynical.

*Quotes taken from Jello Biafra's spoken word bit, entitled "Grow More Pot". Look for it on YFP2P

Well said Alphageek.

Also, I need to add my experience with nicotine addiction and the idea that smokers need to smoke more and more tobacco every day in order to sassify* the craving. In short, I call bullshit. I've been smoking for about 4 years now, and I've found that while you are, indeed, addicted to a front-brain stimulant (one of the stronger addictions, similar to cocaine, meth, amphetamines and such), smoking is as much about habit and rhythm as it is about dosing yourself with a chemical. When I get out of bed in the morning, I have about 30-45 minutes until I want a cigarette. After a meal, without fail, I get a very strong craving for a cigarette. When I decide to turn in, I almost always have one last cigarette and check my email one last time before I call it a day (or call it a night, as is more often the case). There are others throughout the day of course, more or less randomly (though traveling in an automobile is also a fairly strong trigger, and I usually have one as I walk across the parking lot to go into work), but there isn't the kind of escalation that wolf seems to be indicating as ubiquitous to the nature of addiction. It's a rare (and usually quite shitty) day that I smoke more than 10-12 cigarettes.

The only time my need to smoke increases is as I near my quitting date at which point I begin to smoke at a somewhat hysterical pitch......

Other than that my smoking remained primarily consistent across several years. That's not to say it didnt increase, it did. But it increased like once or twice across a decade and then didnt drop back afterwards. I have friends who can smoke one or two a day and have done so for years. I also have friends who used to smoke a small amount, gave up and then several years later started again but at a much highe rlevel than before......then again I have a friend who had quit and restarted but is now smoking nowhere near as many as before she quit.

After 47 years of tobacco abuse, the last 40 have been at a constant rate. Pot varies so much in quality, you just don't know. :rasta: