The Gloucester City Council's Ordinance and Administration Committee gave the thumbs-up last week to a new proposal put forward by the local police department that will tack $100 on the already approved, state-mandated $100 fine imposed on anyone caught smoking marijuana in public.
Just days earlier, next-door Manchester is working toward a similar measure, only officials there opted to increase the fine to $300, which is about what Wall Street's top executives spend on a bottle of wine every day at lunch.
Obviously, none of this is expected to sit well with those on Cape Ann who often or occasionally indulge in pot smoking, that perfectly harmless form of recreation enjoyed by millions of laid-back Americans, or so the argument goes.
But is pot smoking just that, a perfectly harmless form of recreation? Not according to Gloucester police Lt. Joseph Aiello, who, in speaking on behalf of the city, warned residents that anyone caught smoking marijuana in public can expect to pay a very stiff fine.
Although not mentioned in local press reports, Manchester and Gloucester's new anti-pot-smoking initiatives come on the heels of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent trip to Mexico City. Clinton had gone to Mexico to discuss with Mexican president Felipe Calderon the development of a joint U.S.-Mexican strategy aimed at defeating that country's powerful drug cartels, thus ending the ever-worsening epidemic of drug-related violence that has broken out along the border between the two nations.
But it was during those talks that Clinton greatly surprised most observers by putting the blame for the illegal drug problem not just on our neighbor to the south, but on her own country as well.
"The demand for illicit narcotics in the United States," she said, "is fueling the drug wars south of the border." And with that, America's top diplomat hit the nail squarely on the head.
Indeed, our nation is the world's No. 1 consumer of illicit drugs. And so long as that is true, an unimaginably ruthless international industry will continue to be subsidized by those millions of Americans who appear oblivious to their own complicity in the countless thousands of drug-related murders and other deaths that occur in this country and throughout the world every year.
Pot smoking may seem a relatively innocent pastime in relation to the the use of harder drugs, like cocaine and heroin. But its connection to the international illicit drug industry — the chief byproduct of which is murder, death, and ruined lives — is obvious to all but the most blind or uncaring among us.
While there is no way of knowing exactly how many Americans are regular users of illegal drugs, government studies set the figure at between 14 to 18 million. Similar studies indicate that "more than a third of all Americans 12 and older have tried an illicit drug" at some point in their lives, and that "90 percent of those who have used illegal drugs used marijuana or hashish."
Where does nearly all the marijuana bought and smoked by Americans come from? The Mexican drug cartels, as well as those in Columbia and Jamaica. So, when you light up, just know where at least a portion of the proceeds from the purchase of that joint are going, as well as what violent, death-dealing activities your drug money is helping to support.
Likewise, it is impossible to measure precisely the impact the use of illegal drugs has on our society as a whole. One study suggests that illness, death, and crime resulting from illegal drug use costs the country over $180 billion a year. Unless my math is wrong, that amounts to nearly $5,000 for every man woman and child in the country.
Certainly America's domestic drug problem touches the lives of people on every level of society, and in every community and neighborhood in the nation, manifesting itself, here as elsewhere, in "violence and property crimes, prison expenses, court and criminal costs, emergency room visits, health-care utilization, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, lost child support, foster care and welfare costs, reduced productivity, and unemployment."
Unfortunately, none of this is likely to mean much to those who choose to ignore the fact that their decision to do illicit drugs — be it marijuana, hashish, cocaine, LSD, heroin, ecstasy, methamphetamines, PCP — poses a threat to the country greater even than that concocted in the sinister mind of the terrorist Osama bin Laden.
Sadly, most of the people who will be lighting up behind closed doors at home, or in locked cars in parking lots behind neon-lit Mini-Marts, or at Stage Fort Park or Singing Beach after dark, will be young kids, teens who have not even a clue that the "high" they think they need will come at considerable cost to the nation.
The link that exists between America's world-leading consumption of illegal drugs and the murky depths into which it has fallen in recent years can no longer be ignored. But other than jacked-up fines for those, mostly kids, caught smoking marijuana in public, the rest of us seem all but lost when it comes to how best to deal with this shameful distinction and its dreadful consequences.
So as things now stand, the fine for getting caught pot smoking in Manchester and Gloucester will be $300 and $200, respectively.
Meanwhile, in Mexico, Columbia, and Jamaica, the murderous illegal drug cartels will keep on raking in the millions, as the cost in blood and ruined lives continues to soar and the cloud now hanging over America further darkens.
Jim Munn, a frequent contributor to the Times, is the longtime boys' track & field coach at Gloucester High School.
