Holy smokes

I'm a little late getting to this, but David Samuels had a fairly interesting article on the medical marijuana movement in California in the New Yorker last week.

I would like to offer two points of criticism:

1) When will the New Yorker publish a piece that had a funny lede, for chrissakes! (This is a subject that begs for a snappy, tabloid lede... Instead he went with one of those rambling, New Yorker ledes. C'mon, David. You're better than that!)

2) While certainly the medical marijuana dispensers are abused by people who don't have real medical problems (or maybe do, but prefer weed to other remedies because weed is more fun), I sort of wish Samuels spoke a little about the people who are chronically in pain and for whom marijuana is their best (or their only) remedy. Medical marijuana is really not about recreation. There are people who need this and who are denied it by a truly pointless federal statute. (Of course, I believe marijuana should be legalized in general -- but I know that that's not in the cards for the near future.)

The article makes it sound as if the only people who are ever punished in California are the dealers and the mules. Not true! Chronically ill people -- who are operating in good faith -- are just as punished by the actions of the D.E.A. as anyone else is. Take, say, the case of Angel Raich, someone who would spend the rest of their life in agonizing pain if not for cannabis. The government's response? Tough shit.

I sort of wish that side of the argument was expanded.

Memo to Amy Winehouse:

Quit while you're ahead...

David Carr has a fairly gripping piece in tomorrow's NY Times Magazine about his life and times as a drug addict/dealer/wife beater -- and how he sobered up.

It's funny: Almost all the stories are the same (or, at least, similar: If you've lived to tell the tale, you've obviously cleaned yourself up) and yet I still find most of them extremely exciting and readable. (Exception: 28 Days.) I actually never read any of the James Frey books, but I really liked Augusten Burroughs' Dry. And Seth Mnookin has written extremely wrenching pieces in Slate and Salon about his struggles with addiction. (For the Salon piece, Mnookin's mother wrote a companion article -- which was even more wrenching.)

(Schlub connection? There isn't really one. However, when he was first trying to get custody of his children from his addict/dealer wife, his lawyer says: “You weighed close to 300 pounds. It was in the winter, and you had on a very heavy coat, but it obviously didn’t fit you; it was raggedy. If I had seen you on the street, I would have thought you were homeless, because you were very rough. Your hygiene was bad; your eyes were rheumy.” But, just for the record, even though Carr might have looked a little schlubby, there is little overlap between hopeless addiction and schlubbiness.)