Ira Kortum:Save me from my bong

Please save us from ourselves! Please, Big Brother (B.B.), where are you when we need you?! Oh there you are! What’s that? Your name is John Ashcroft? Oh, OK, Attorney General Ashcroft. Well, Attorney General Ashcroft, can we just call you B.B. for short? Cool, now what’s the first step toward a safer America? You know, one that will protect us from our own decisions, focus on manipulative controlling law in place of educating the public, and then letting the public make its own educated decision for itself and take the consequences? No euthanasia? OK, what else?

Hey, let’s focus on Bush’s war on drugs. That’s always a popular topic. Now what could we do that would have a minimal cost, have the least amount of chance for failure with the most success? That way, everyone would know that B.B. is on the job? Columbian Cartels? Naw, we lost that one already. Crack cocaine? Well, that doesn’t make sense. Why would you want to fight the FBI? Anyways, the public’s already found out about that so, “hot potato.”

Wait a minute … GOT IT! We could go after those places that sell pipes and bongs and functional glass art and stuff. We’ll just do away with that pesky residue rule and whammo, instant success! We already know where these “head shops” are anyway as they’re currently running as legal, registered, taxpaying, law-abiding businesses. We could even give the operations cool pot lingo like, um, Operation Headhunter or Operation Pipe Dreams. The public will LOVE it!

All we have to do is change one tiny rule and then swoop in. The sooner the better. The longer we wait, the longer they have time to either comply with the law and or find new and creative ways around it. You know how inventive those potheads can be. The next thing you know, the stores will be selling pop cans that have certain dents and punctures in them as mobile, functional art when we all know what they’ll really be used for.

So we have to make the move on these stores and bust them now! What’s that, B.B.? How do I know about the pop cans? The lingo? Well, uh, college, but that, wait! What are you doing? Arrest? Indictment?! But it was all years ago, you know as well as everyone else that there’s a time and a place for everything, and it’s called college! No, stop! Get away! I have my rights, you know!? Rights protected by the Constitution of the United States of America and … what? Oh yeah … we threw all that out the window when we went after more power for the government to take away the private rights of the individual under the guise of the war on terrorism, didn’t we? Shit.