Saturday, April 16, 2011

Pass the Ganja, man!

Town Center 3:10 PM Day One

Fine for public consumption alcohol: $300, a criminal offense

Fine for public consumption of marijuana: $100, a civil offense

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Stoner discussion page

The Springfield Sunday Republican reports Interestingly this morning's Front Page print edition omits the photo of Matthew James and Niki Snow smoking pot and run a more family oriented photo of them juggling. And they change the headline from the cutesy "Annual Extravaganja festival lights up in Amherst" to a more boring "Marijuana fest mix of pot, policy"

The Boston Globe Reports

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Information presented prior to the event (event website) indicates that smoking is allowed

"We have an agreement with the police; smoking is allowed on the Common. DO NOT antagonize the police. If you blow smoke in a cops face you will be arrested. They are respectful of us and our right to free speech they deserve the same respect."

and publicity (Masslive) has encouraged attendance.

I think we have moved the Hobart Hoedown to a new location- It should be an eventful night.

Larry Kelley said...

A saw a couple state troopers out and about. I doubt anybody has a "deal" with them.

Anonymous said...

This is why our teenagers think drugs are no big deal. I don't understand why this isn't held on campus since it is sponsored by a Umass group. An entire weekend that I don't want to take my KIDS into my own town.

Anonymous said...

The town was packed today. Any chance that our local merchants benefited?

It does seem to be a tribute to our general poverty of ideas and inspirations that a gathering dedicated simply to pot drew so many.

Don't we have something better to do?

Sad.

Larry Kelley said...

Subway, Antonio's, La Veracruzana, ABC, Russell's Package Store, and of course the bars probably did well, although the crowd did not look like the Judie's kind of crew.

And I'm sure Captain Candy got their money's worth for sponsorship.

Ed said...

The fact that smoking pot in public is a civil offense while drinking in public is a criminal one shows exactly why the beer drinkers are in open rebellion that will spill over into a Kent State incident.

Exactly why doesn't the town (a) make both civil offenses and (b) make both $300 fine offenses -- both of which the town could legally do.

Simple answer: the left smokes pot while the right drinks beer -- this is inherently political and represents the growing conflict between the aging leftist hippies who run things and the increasingly conservative students.

Anonymous said...

Anyone with drug abuse in their family, be in alchohol, pot, pills heroin, crystal meth, crack or anything else, will wonder at why this drug is given a 2 day celebration on Amherst's common. Pretty sad all around. Where is the leadership in this town?

Larry Kelley said...

Well the town is making some money on the deal:
$50 for a "Temporary Food Service" permit. Then a "Food Establishment" is $300 a "Food Service Plan review" $200, "Mobile Food" $125, "Bakery" $150, Sani-Cans permit is another $150.

Although unlike the private July 4 Parade Committee, the town does NOT charge $1,200 for police.

Anonymous said...

you detractors are way beyong the curve. the only reason it was made illegal and villified is because the early oil companies saw it as a major threat so they lobbied against it. the fact is hemp has been used for centuries....canvas is a word derived from cannibis. it is a cancer cure and has thousands of other uses, is better for the earth than cutting trees, and you can essential make alomost anything from it and it's derivaties. many states are making it legal, it is only a matter of time. the big hurdle is getting past the globalists, who control the dea, which overseas the planetary drug trade, laundering the money through big banks like wachovia...see the recent bust on wachovia for laundering billions of dollars for the drug trade, and only got slapped with a 100 million dollar fine....not a bad investment...spend 100 mill get back billions. btw, that is why we are in afghanistan, guarding and aiding the opium trade which has serged since we went in there...do the research, this is all real stuff. weed is the answer for the planet, and you naysayers need to try to open your mind to reality.

you know who

Larry Kelley said...

Yeah, I figured you were a fan.

uninformed local said...

The one place cops were desperately needed was Main/Amity & South Pleasant to keep pedestrians from wandering into traffic. Can't count how many near-misses I saw in just a few minutes. Those portable barricades they put up in front of the bars on Friday nights would've come in handy.

And Ed...dope consumption is not restricted to the lefties, take it from me.

Anonymous said...

you know who--thank you for taking me back to innumerable family meals with high relatives spewing incoherently oblivious to reality and the feelings of those around them. i really miss those good times with brain-altered people who couldn't just sit, eat and talk without a chemical fix. i bet you've never noticed the pain on your friends and relatives faces because it's all about you and your drug.

Anonymous said...

12:57, well said.
We are fighting the drug battle with our teen in Amherst now and I know others are too. We have addiction in our family and are not clueless to anything. How about the town and schools do even just a little to help those of us who want it and need it? There is nothing in place.
Why just condone and encourage it? How about it Mr. Musante and Ms. Geryk?

Amherst = one giant dump said...

"How about it Mr. Musante and Ms. Geryk?"



How can you possibly expect these two to help you?! They're addicts as well. Well, money addicts... same difference.

Dale said...

Just got back from taking our young son out to dinner. foolish nieve me wasn't considering the munchy factor and lol-n-behold guess who came to dinner. That's right the "fabulous let's get baked boys"(and girls). Fortunatly we were about 5 minutes from wrapping it up because every other word was the "F-Bomb". If we had just start and these individuals had shown up I think we may have had to an "intervention" with them to help them better understand why language like that is not acceptable in a family restaurant.

Larry Kelley said...

Yeah my wife just returned from China late this afternoon so we went out to dinner this evening as well--but I made sure to head south to South Hadley.

Anonymous said...

So this is how it looks like it's going:

1) We legalize marijuana.
2) Marijuana begins showing up throughout our society and more and more people try it and love it. Soon, it's everywhere.
3) Then, horror of horrors, we find out more about the health effects of continuous marijuana use. Law enforcement is hamstrung dealing with drivers impaired by marijuana use. And, there's an increasing number of people who just can't seem to get through the day without it.
4) And we spend several generations wrestling with our fascination with the stuff, in the same way we've done with cigarettes, which we once thought was a cool thing to do.

All in all, we are going to waste a ton of psychic and cultural energy coming to grips with yet another chemical we put in our bodies.

Dale said...

So true I used to work with some people that I wouldn't say over indulged, but definitly indulged in smoking pot. In the morning if they hadn't smoked were pretty productive. After lunch forget it they were slugs and could barely make it through the day. These were great people but definitly this affected their work enough where one had to be let go, and the other left because the "demands" of their job were now to much for them to handle when they were "baked".

Anonymous said...

the select board controls use of the common

Anonymous said...

And the individual controls their behavior in public.

Anonymous said...

Well, it only stands to reason that pot smoking is carcinogenic -- you're ingesting smoke. Lung cancer may be on the rise in California among the medical marijuana crowd. However, if you only want a buzz or pain relief, it would be wiser to just put it in brownies, or ingest it somehow.

Nobody should be driving a vehicle while impaired, whether it's pot or alcohol.

And if a person is too baked to work, then they should be fired. Smoking pot is like anything else: moderation must be employed.

BTW, I haven't smoked anything since the 1970's. Wanted to be a good example to the kids and wanted to hold a responsible job.

Anonymous said...

Well then, buddy, I am hoping that you are also lobbying to ban cigarette smoking from the common. I'd be more concerned about my kids inhaling cigarette smoke than exposing them to *gasp* high college students! Aren't you more concerned about how easy it is for kids to obtain cigarettes, by far a more leading cause of lung cancer than marijuana will ever be! What about alcohol? Unlike alcohol (which, like pot, leaves you in an altered state), you never read about someone dying of cannabis poisoning. While we're at it, let's ban fast food and caffine, since the obesity rate in America is ridiculously high and caffine is such a highly addictive product with medical risks of its own. How are these things more acceptable than marijuana? Is hemp too risky of a competitor to your paper company, Mr. Hearst?

Anonymous said...

What is today's miracle drug is tomorrow's poison.