Re: "It's just pot.": Double Standard?

"Werebat" <ronpoirier@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:WEpmi.36977$LE1.31664@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
> Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>
> >
> > Teenagers today know the score on pot perfectly well.  They are
intelligent
> > enough to know that a teacher is pretty much required by school policy
> > to say that recreational drug use is bad.
>
> You are telling half of the deal here.  You are omitting the dangerous
part.
>
>
> > What kids today need is positive examples of role models.  I would not
call
> > an adult who takes as stupid a risk as this guy did any kind of
positive
> > role
> > model.  To me, him smoking pot ina public park is as stupid as riding
a
> > motorcycle without a helmet.
>
> IOW his crime in your eyes is not that he smoked pot so much as that he
> got caught doing it.  There's a lovely lesson to teach our kids.
>

This is correct.  Why - because pot is not addicitive, and not unhealthy.
It
is far better for you than tobacco.  And in many jurisdictions it's legal
to
use
as a medicine.

The laws on pot are stupid and deserve to be violated.  Stupid laws
deserve
to be violated, that is what this country was founded on.  If you still
don't
understand this, then read the Declaration of Independence.

HOWEVER, there is a big difference between public and flagrant violation
of stupid laws, and private violation of stupid laws.  The people who
should be out there publically and flagrantly violating stupid laws are
the
people who's job it is to effect change - ie: political protesters.  For
example
the people publically burning their draft cards during Vietnam War were
doing their job as protesters.  The people who it isn't their job to be
protesters
but also it isn't their job to be implementors of the stupid laws, they
should
be doing their civic duty and voting the stupid laws out the window.  The
people who's job it is to implement the law, their obligation is to do
that
and not to protest against it.

This has nothing to do with being caught.  Being caught violating a stupid
law is a natural result of violating the stupid law in public in front of
authority figures.  If your a protester it is in fact essential that you
do
get caught and get cited - your supposed to get arrested and cited -
because
the public outrage at seeing someone get arrested and cited for a stupid
law is what brings about change in the laws.

For example the guy that got arrested for not paying child sup****t to
his ex-wife.  Problem was, DNA testing on the child and the guy showed
the child wasn't his.  The stupid laws on the books were what got him
arrested and he had to be arrested in order for public outrage to get
the legislators to change the laws.

This principal's job was not that of a protester, in fact, completely to
the
contrary, as a school administrator he agreed to implement ALL the laws,
stupid or not.  If he disagreed with some of the laws - like drug laws -
then as long as he was a school principal he was morally obligated to
remain silent and do his smoking in private.  If he felt that he couldn't
do that then he should have resigned and made public that the reason he
was resigning is that he was protesting the drug laws the school was
telling him to administer.

What you seem to completely miss is this guy's hipocracy.  He's making
a living in a job where the people paying him to do the job expect him to
do certain things.  One of these things is to serve as a role model,
another
is to be anti-drug.  He's being paid to appear anti-drug.  Yet he feels it
OK to be publically smoking pot.

This is no different than when the Miss America pagent finds out that
a contestant posed **** for Playboy.  The pagent is hiring someone as
a public figure and quite reasonably expect them to not engage in
certain behaviors.  Such as posing ****.  The contestant that takes the
money even though they have done the posing anyway, is being a
cheater.

>
> >>>If  Mr. Miller was the school's janitor would he still have his job?
> >>
> >>If he was the school's janitor, would the school board have even found
out
> >>about the citation?  Would it have made the news?
> >>
> >
> >
> > Irrelevant, schools are not holding up janitors as role models.
>
> Why not?  If kids know that janitors are getting arrested for possession
> and keeping their jobs, won't that affect them too?
>

Of course it will.  However kids are able to put things into perspective
which
you appear to be unable to do so.

Sure, a minimum wage janitor is probably expected by the hiring school to
be drug-free.  But if it turns out that he is not, well as long as he's
not
doing
it during his work hours, the expectation by most people is that when your
out there paying minimum wage you take what you can get, and you are going
to expect to get rather crappy workers.

By contrast when your hiring the top-dog administrator for a lot more
money
than minimum wage, and you expect that he's going to be drug free, when it
turns out he is not the example he's sending the kids is that even when
people
are paying you a lot of money to be a good worker, it's perfectly OK to
screw
them over anyway.

As a parent I really don't want my school holding up janitors as role
models anyway.  I don't want my kids learning that being a janitor in
a school is a goal to strive for.  If my kid came home and said they
heard through the grapevine that the school janitor was a pot head,
my response would be "well, what do you expect out of people that
work **** jobs like that?  The guy's a pot head probably because he
dropped out of school without graduating and
doesen't have anything better to look forward to than cleaning up
after you.  That's what happens to people that don't do their homework
and pay attention to their teachers"

And of course now I'm sure to hear some mush-headed politically
correct outrage about how janitors are people to and all of that.  Fine,
you teach your kids that and when your kids and mine are grown up,
your kids will be emptying the wastebaskets in the office building
that my kids are working in.

Ted