Thursday, August 26, 2010

What About The Right Not To Breath in Pot Smoke?

I've been working outside in the little garden patch in front of our apartment. It's tiny, but I've filled it with lavender and violas and it's come along nicely in the past week, from the bare packed earth littered with cigarette butts that it was when we first moved in. But it really is only pleasant to experience when we're getting out of the car, and then there's a good chance it will only be pleasant for a moment.

You see, in our county we've had a number of "doctors" come through town and set up shop on the side of the road. People come through before hand and spread the word. Sometimes there's an ad in the paper. When the "doctor" actually arrives he has people standing up and down the side of the highway advertising his "service." He sells medical marijuana cards, usually for around $200 a pop.

You can get them for anything. Headaches. Cramps. A hangnail.

A recent report in a newspaper claimed that one of our former next door neighbors (his family still lives next door to my family and the stink of their plants drifts over constantly) had made over a million dollars selling the cards. I wouldn't be surprised since he constantly writes in to the paper, telling everyone that every single plant that God made is good for the human body (can anyone spot the flaw in that logic?).

Back to my complaint though... Before we moved we lived next to growers and while there was a quarter of a mile between there house and ours, our home would stink like a skunk had sprayed for months leading up to autumn and the harvest. At least it wasn't year round though...

There isn't much room in our new home for growers to grow outdoors, but since it seems that many of our neighbors have cards, we get to smell the smoke. At night people sit out front and smoke pot. In the morning people sit out front and smoke pot. I open my door and it smells like pot. I open the window after a hot day... and the house fills with the smell...

California makes me feel a little bit crazy sometimes. And what bothers me even more than the basic legalization of marijuana (because let's face it, if anyone can get a card for no reason whatsoever, it basically is legal) is the fact that those of us who don't do drugs have to breath it in all the time.

I have a prescription for hydrocordone that I don't use, despite my headaches, because I don't like putting chemicals in my body if I absolutely don't have to. I'd like to have the option of not breathing in marijuana smoke too. And more than that, I don't want my seven and a half week old daughter and two year old exposed to it every time we open a window or walk outside.

All the druggies in California have there rights. What about the rest of us?

6 comments:

  1. That really is horrible. I don't know how you live with that! I'd go crazy. When I lived in an apartment my lower neighbor would occasionally smoke it and I called the cops on her once. Here at least you can do that. I don't care what people think. I don't like weed.

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  2. Ugh, I hear that...our neighbors don't use pot, but they smoke cigarettes (and not even remotely-pleasant smelling ones) out on the porch and the smell wafts into our place and gets into everything else. Foul stuff!

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  3. Our next door neighbors smoke up occasionally, but since we own our house and plan on being here for a while, I don't want to antagonize them by calling the cops. It does annoy me that the porch they do it on is right next to my daughter's bedroom, so if we want to open her window on cool days there's a chance we might be breathing pot smoke. I live in south Texas. I think pot is just becoming normalized everywhere. It is kinda sad.

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  4. Sadly, it's only going to get worse. Since they are trying to make it legal for real.

    I live in Northern California too, and lived in a neighborhood where every night our neighbors smoked pot (along with drinking, and loud partying.) Our house would reek of pot. It was horrible, especially since I had a new baby. Thankfully, we've moved and have good neighbors now.

    Elicia is right. It is SAD how normal the use of drugs is becoming. I'm so sick of people saying you can't get addicted to it, or non sense like... "It's no worse than alochol".. or "It makes me concentrate better", or "I drive better if I'm high" (yes, I've actually heard someone say that!).. blah, blah, blah. It's maddening.

    I pray that the voters of California will wise up, but sadly I don't think that's going to happen.

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  5. Even if it's legal now, I think of it just like cigarette smoke. It is just so gross to those of us who don't like it, and don't want it anywhere near our lungs. Women and children are particularly susceptible to cancers of the lung, too!

    Anything that burns - any kind of smoke - whether it's a plant, or paper, or wood - is a terrible, terrible carcinogen. It's the very chemicals that come from a substance on fire that are so nasty and so dangerous. People have a right to live in a house without poisons billowing in from their neighbors, no matter what's being burned - cigarettes, pot, whatever. Ick to it ALL!

    I'm so sorry that you have to put up with that. At very least you're able to teach your daughter a lesson about how nasty these things are. When I was growing up, my mom would react to a cigarette butt on the beach or sidewalk with a loud yelp of fright, clearly just for my benefit. It worked - I never ever smoked and I literally heave even passing smokers on the street.

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  6. I agree with most of you!

    Foximus Prime-

    We live in a rural part of California over three hundred miles from the closest city. Not all of California is LA (which is, by the way, over 600 miles away). We have fresh water and fresh air. People come up here to fish and hike and rock climb.

    And if you've read my other posts you've probably seen that with migraines that average around four a week, I can sympathize with being in pain.

    But I don't dump estrogen or other hormones into my body and I don't want to breath in smoke of any kind, no matter how "harmless" people claim that it is.

    I remember talking in poli sci classes about how a persons right to something may extend as far as it affects other people... My right to swing my arm extends as far as it hits someone else in the nose... Well, when a persons drug addiction (or prescription) starts affecting the lives of other people there right to it is very definitely in question.

    And I definitely disagree as to the "harmlessness" of pot. I have friends who thought it was "harmless." And at least one of those friends is dead because of what began as a "harmless" recreation. Not to mention the very strong link between schizophrenia and the use of pot in teenagers. And I have to say I've seen those results in reality too, and it's not pretty at all. No, I can say I strongly disagree with the description of pot as "harmless."

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