Hey-o! The cops in Kansas got some weed jokes!
4/20 – the official holiday for cannabis connoisseurs – happens to fall on a Friday this year, and it has all of us doing whatever it takes to get through the work week and make it to whatever sesh awaits us. Whoever handles the Twitter account for the Lawrence, Kansas Police Department got into the 4:20 spirit as well, in about as funny a way as you’d imagine a cop being. If you guessed “lame ass condescending junk food joke”, congratulations and move on to the next paragraph!
In a Tweet sent out early on the morning of April 17th, the department warned: “Hey potheads planning to toke up on 4/20, stay off the road. Stock up on Cheetos and Mt. Dew BEFORE you spark. Saturation patrols to find drugged drivers to occur.”
Har har, good one Sinbad.
If you’ll notice, the target of the threat is specifically and only cannabis users.
Drunk driving? Not worth 280 characters, apparently.
Nor is driving under the influence of prescription opiates. Odd omission since the most recent studies by the Center for Disease Control found that Morton County, Kansas ranked 17th out of 3000+ counties nationwide when it comes to a statistic called “Morphine Milligram Equivalent” (MME) per person. Morton County has no room for your deplorable wacky tobacky and junk food habit, but they are apparently cool with an MME score of 2,441.5 milligrams being prescribed on average per person each year.
2441.5 milligrams per year breaks down to roughly 7mg each and every day, all year long.
By all means, go to the store zonked on legal heroin if you’re in Kansas!
As for the sincerity of their threat, conservative legislators in the state of Kansas have repeatedly shot down bills aimed at legitimizing or legalizing cannabis on a medical or recreational level, instead enacting an all-bark-no-bite Drugged Driving Law which, among other vague platitudes, states:
“In Kansas, a person is guilty of DUI if he or she operates any vehicle (1) while under the influence of any drug or combination of drugs to a degree that renders the person incapable of safely driving a vehicle, (2) while under the influence of a combination of alcohol and any drug or drugs to a degree that renders the person incapable of safely driving a vehicle, OR (3) while a person is a habitual user of any narcotic.”
How does the local beat cop in Kansas determine that the random driver they just flagged down at an unconstitutional roadblock sobriety checkpoint is a “habitual user of any narcotic”?
Does coffee count?
Cigarettes?
Kansas cops who suspect a driver of being baked behind the wheel will use a 12-step examination to determine if the driver is under the influence of cannabis, including measuring the pupils, checking muscle tone (??), blood pressure, and pulse, among other intrusions on your sovereign rights.
The fact of the matter is, police officers are not medical doctors and don’t have the training or skill to accurately interpret such medical conditions, take vital signs and determine muscle rigidity and what may be affecting it. There are countless explanations for why a person’s blood pressure, pulse or eyes may appear the way that they do which have nothing to do with “habitual use of narcotics”.
Hell, there are legal prescription drugs advertised right on television that could produce these allegedly suspicious symptoms while not impairing a driver whatsoever.
Furthermore, as we all know, the metabolites from consuming cannabis can remain in your system for 30 days or more. It is ridiculous to try to prosecute your own citizens based off of a two week old toke.
But if you are waiting for Kansas lawmakers to come to the aid of their constituents, you have to understand that they are a large part of the problem, with no interest in any solutions.
Kansas Republican Rep. Steve Alford says African Americans are genetically predisposed to handling weed poorly
Take Kansas Republican State Representative Steve Alford. Earlier this year, when asked about the green rush of cannabis legalization, he shocked the crowd by muttering, “What you really need to do is go back in the ’30s and when they outlawed all types of drugs in Kansas [and] across the United States. What was the reason why they did that? One of the reasons why — I hate to say it — it’s the African Americans, they were basically users and they basically responded the worst off those drugs just because their character makeup, their genetics, and that.”
This doofus could not be more incorrect, of course. Nor could he be more overtly racist with his views of marijuana and African Americans. The fact is, blacks and whites use cannabis is nearly identical proportions, blacks just get arrested at a much higher rate…because of politicians like Steve Alford.
So, to our Kansas heads and homies – Be careful out there this week, especially on Friday. The law is bogus but the powers that be in your state are on the wrong side of history and have not figured it out yet.
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