Sign o' the Times? ☮

In September my cousin tried reefer for the very first time....
now he's shooting horse.  It's June.  Times...

Well the city knows when a rocket blows,
but still everybody wants to fly...

Some say a man ain't happy truly, until a man truly dies...
Oh why, oh why? Siii-iiign o' the Times.
~Prince
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In my county here, we recently had a young man tripping on acid run in front of a semi on the highway after weirding out at a 'party'.

The 18-year-old who sold it to him got one year in the local jail is all, and an order by the softie judge to finish high school.  Turns out it was a designer drug, not even good acid.

The aspiring businessman didn't know his product, and his customer -- who leaves behind a baby boy -- paid for his actions, but where are the consequences for the dealer?

Oh, his school testified, sent letters on his behalf -- there wasn't even a trial, the softie d.a. pleads everything down... and the judge, who went to the same school, petted his wrist, not even a soft slap.

Now I thought every high school these days taught about the dangers of hallucinogens, mixing in drinking and drugs, and not doing acid in unsafe places where you might have a bad trip.  I got out in '86, and I know my suburban Chicago school drilled the dangers of hard drugs in health class, as well as AIDS prevention, which was still scary and new...

But maybe this school -- Barron -- still teaches Nancy Reagan's just-say-no, abstinence-only education from the 80's...   I don't know. 

Were I the judge? 
New Richmond in St.  Croix County offers a 'challenge incarceration program' -- a boot camp for non-violent younger offenders.  They work in the community, in baggy beige uniforms with black belts.  Six or eight of them are dropped off on a street under supervision, and run from senior driveway to senior driveway, shovels in hand, after a snowstorm.

You should see how systematic and quickly a healthy young team can clear a driveway -- 'Yes sir.'  -- before receiving permission to get on to the next one, in a neighborhood with seniors still in single-family homes.

At the hockey rink, they scrubbed the glass, took out the mats to scrub them down, scrubbed the toilets and lockerroom floors.  One guy had art skills, and left behind a mural at the rink, after they got permission for him to come in extra hours when only the maintenance guy was working, no extra supervision needed.

Our feelings at first were mixed, Mal and me. 

He worked at the rink at the time, and saw the parents get lazy after the tournaments with their volunteer hours.  Oh, they'd sweep and pick up trash left in the stands, but the heavy lifting?  Leave it for the prisoners on Monday morning, they'd say, even when there were still hours to put in, or other projects they could complete.

I was uncomfortable with all the 'yes, ma'ams' when you encountered them casually, and that the community seemed to be relying on cheap  labor.  But the guys loved getting out of the barracks, Mal told me .  You couldn't talk to them in a long conversation, but you could make eye contact and try to offer them a warm woman's smile, pay a compliment on their work, or exchange a generic weather greeting. 

They were picked up by male volunteer drivers from the local churches on Sundays if they wanted to worship with us, when they were advanced enough in trustworthiness, and attended services in their baggy beiges, with cropped hair and clunky black glasses.  The congregation clapped, I like to think in a genuine display of  appreciation and goodwill, when a name was called and a young man stood on his last Sunday with us before graduating the program and returning.... 'home.'

You hope they took their newfound pride in their bodies, in themselves, and in their potential contributions to community back home.  'Things I couldn't do before, now I think I can. And I'm leaving here a better man.'
 
Some came from Milwaukee and downstate, but most were white and needed a second chance too.  I wish our judge would have sentenced the kid to a 180- or 120-day program, because I suspect the drug dealer who dealt death suffers from ... affluenza.  His defense attorney -- no trial, remember? -- got the one year in jail, time already served in the friendly local confines.

He had the gall to ask the kid's record be then kept clean -- the conviction dropped from the record -- if he went through the probation conditions, got his h.s. diploma, and completed all the pet-on-the wrist conditions the softie judge set...   Doesn't bring the dead kid back to life though, nor support his surviving son; that's on the taxpayers now.  The dead man's father was not on-board with the soft sentence either.

I wish the drug dealer had gotten time to work alongside other young criminals, to be broken down and built back up into a responsible man, which is something he didn't learn locally from his school or home environment.

This matters because if we're going to decriminalize some drugs, we need to be responsible in teaching the differences between stimulants and hallucinogens, say, and new 'designer drugs' like bath salts and the myriad of prescription pills now on the underground marketplace menu.  We owe it to ourselves to be honest, and to teach consequences for actions.

I felt sorriest for the semi driver myself, he saw the kid running at him but could not avoid him.  He was the innocent here.  His insurance cleaned up;  whether they can collect from the dead man or the drug dealer's policies for causing the 'accident', I don't know.

We're going to see more and more of this, especially in affluent teens whose brains aren't yet developed and whose pocketbooks are artificially inflated.  Keep your eyes open for them.

In September my cousin tried reefer for the very first time....
now he's shooting horse. It's June. Times...

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Do you think it's true that our unwise intervention in Afghanistan has actually accelerated the heroin trade coming into this country?   Let a thousand poppy flowers bloom -- it's their cash crop -- and all that?