Legalized Marijuana / Good Idea?

I suppose many of you recently read about Levy Thamba Pongi, age 19, a Wyoming college student.  He and three friends drove to Denver to partake of the now legal marijuana in Colorado.  A friend of his, who was of the required age (21), purchased some of the various products containing marijuana – including some cookies.  The store clerk told Pongi’s friend to divide each cookie into six pieces, and to eat just one piece at a time – apparently giving the consumer the ability to gradually gauge the effects.

Pongi ate an entire cookie.  After a short period of time, he began screaming and throwing things around the students’ shared hotel room.  He then ran from the room, jumped over a railing, and fell four floors to the lobby below.  He died.  Marijuana intoxication was given as the principal factor in Pongi’s erratic behavior and subsequent death.

Several years back when I was working in corporate security for a major forest products company, there was an incident at one of our Northern California facilities.  A young female employee brought cookies to share with the other employees.  The cookies contained marijuana.  This employee was not totally stupid, or perhaps she was, I guess that depends on your perspective.  She did have sense enough to warn employees offered a cookie that they contained marijuana.  Now, keep in mind that this was a lumber and plywood mill with a lot of dangerous equipment.

Another employee, a young male, decided to give one of the cookies to a foreman who he later described as something of a "bad ass."  The young employee thought it would be funny to watch the foreman make a “fool of himself.”  The foreman, an older male in his late fifties, was unaware of the cookie’s contents.

The result was the foreman went into convulsions, suffered near cardiac arrest, and spent several days in the local hospital’s intensive care unit.

I conducted my inquiry and interviewed everyone concerned.  The young female was immediately fired.  During the interview of the young male employee, he seemed unable to grasp the seriousness of what he’d done – stating repeatedly that it was “just a joke.”

I told him that if he thought the foreman was a ‘bad ass’ before, just wait until he returns to work.  However, I said, “You need not worry about that because you’re fired.”  “And, incidentally,” I continued.  "I will be giving a copy of my report to the local Sheriff’s Office.”

“This is a small town,” I told the young man.  “Some people are very angry and you may want to consider relocating.”

To be continued…

True Nelson