Walsh could lead anti-pot effort next year

Yeah he's workin'...OVAHTIME

I think the Marty Walsh character was based on Colin Sullivan.

To suggest this will cost him his job shows you have no idea how politics works in this city. Boston gets a chance every 20 years to elect a new Mayor and if they win once they'll keep winning until they get board or die.

Walsh is supporting the Olympics because his core group of supporters (organized labor) stand to do well if Boston gets the games. They might be the only group to benefit but they vote in huge numbers as shown in the last election. And notice how Walsh quickly signed the contract with the police Union?

Walsh is safe being opposed to pot. 50%+ of the general public wants it legalized but only 25% of these people pay attention to politics and vote. Older and religious voters -- a huge base for someone like Walsh -- remain opposed.

Snow? Voters have memories as long as fleas. The election is in November which is about as far removed from snow as you can get. People aren't going to remember his response to a storm of several years prior or at least won't hold it against him in the voting booth.

But mostly he'll win because in Boston the Mayor is extremely powerful. Business will quickly fall behind him with their support as they don't want to get on his bad side should he win again and remember them as supporting the "other" guy. Most business leaders want to get their permits approved quickly and generally have good relations with the city. Supporting the incumbent makes good sense even if they don't like him or his positions.

One-Term Walsh in: Reefer Madness!

Not everyone under 50 refers to pot as "weed." Many of us don't mention it enough to warrant a vernacular update.

And his honor needs to mind his own bidness. Nothing worse than a recovering fill-in-the-blank.

Agreed. What's next? Telling us all about his personal and meaningful relationship with Mister Jesus?

No one over 50 calls it "weed", they call it "grass".

I figure if you're making shit up (and butchering famous slogans to boot), I can as well.

Stay On Truckin'.

Also, when did the kids start using single quotes when not quoting something within another set of quotes? I blame all the pots they're smoking.

It's right up there with masturbation for well known nicknames.

Reagan and "just say no" ring a bell? How about Nixon declaring a "war on drugs" including pot.

This has everything to do with a politician patronizing the citizens based on his personal experience rather than on what is best for those he represents. It has almost nothing to do with the letter in parentheses after his name but thanks for playing.

Look at a map of what states have medical marijuana and what ones don't. Both parties have idiots like Marty Walsh but overall democrats are way more likely to have common sense when it comes to weed.

I totally agree about concentrating on the Long Island debacle. We generally do great work of trying to provide care for the vulnerable population in the area, including detox and rehab, but then we kick them out of their long term facilities in the middle of the night without any plan for placement or treatment.

But yeah, let's go after pot because Mayor Walsh is in recovery from another substance.

The people I see in shelters are care centers generally aren't there because they smoke too much pot. If Mayor Walsh really wanted to tackle the drug problem, he'd go after heroin.

Walsh sounds like a damn fool when he talks about weed. He says weed leads to addiction and death which everyone knows is total fucking bullshit. He is completely biased and ignorant on the subject. What an embarrassment to the city of Boston.

One thing I find interesting is this.. if Marty was in AA.. he should know to allow people to come to their own convictions about addiction. He should know, by being in AA, that people need to be left alone. You can't 'force' people to do anything, they have to realize it themselves.

So if he's anti-pot and feels that preventing legalization would help, he's actually going against what is taught in AA. Let people make their own decisions and come to their own convictions about addiction.

And besides, it's not like pot is not readily avaliable now, so his claim to that legalization would further addiction is a farce. It's not like you can't get it now. Like I said above, he'd be better off focusing his efforts on treatment rather than prohibition.

(I also stand to be corrected about AA's preaching.. it's been a while since I've been to an Al-Anon meeting so I am a bit rusty. So I welcome being corrected)

That's great! You'll have plenty of time to get to know him better when he rejoins private industry in a couple of years, after becoming Boston's first one-term mayor since Frederick Mansfield. By that time, marijuana will most likely have been legalized via a ballot question, so he and Charlie will be able to drown their sorrows in something other than alcohol.

Gateway drugs DO NOT EXIST. No single drug leads a user to other drugs, unless that person would do those drugs eventually anyway.

The problems are self-medication of mental illness and/or stress, and underlying propensity for addiction (so-called "addictive personality"). It doesn't matter which drug the self-medicator starts with, or the would-be addict starts with.

A classic, but extreme situation was that football player who had never touched anything ever (LDS adherent) who became addicted to painkillers when injured.

There was a news thing about driving stoned. I'm not excusing the practice, but there was a informal study done by a TV station in Colorado. It was very dependant on the user.. if the user was a regular smoker, they were extremely safe. However if a user wasn't a regular smoker, their chances for an accident was far higher (so to speak).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/18/stoned-dr...

Legalization is clearly coming and is clearly the right thing. Still, I worry about the negative effects of people using it all the time and of stoned drivers.

Based on my life experiences, there is no way that people who are high can drive as safely as those who are not high. My friend in high school always claimed, while driving drunk, that he drove BETTER when he had been drinking. That's crazy and so is the idea that your ability to focus behind the wheel is not impaired by smoking pot.

(P.S. I have never called it weed or grass or cannabis. Pot is pot in my vernacular.)

I think legalization would help with all this. Right now, people are told that driving while high is bad, or that smoking them tweeds isn't great for the adolescent mind, or whatever. But because they're also told that mary jane is going to automatically turn them into depraved criminal junkies, and that's clearly not the case, so they disregard the other warnings, too. Perhaps we could keep people from driving while high or smoking up while under 18/21/whatever if we had the basis of credibility that not criminalizing simple marijuana use would give us.

people have died of a marijuana overdose in Boston this year? How exactly does smoking marijuana "lead to death"?

One adviser said Walsh feels strongly enough about opposing legalization “that he is willing to use his political capital to let people know that he is not in favor of it.”

Marty's political capital and four dollars will get you a coffee at Starbucks.

My favorite comment in the Globe yesterday asked "Honestly, has he ever been photographed without a look of abject confusion?" (misterwatson 05/31/15 10:57 PM)

They'd rather gouge those who consume alcohol even more than they already do.

to have to deal with an odor that fades away quickly as opposed to the smell of stale beer bottles in the recycling all summer. Nope. No, sir.

Completely agree! Other things we should illegalize, due to my insane narcissistic delusions personal dislikes of smells:

1. Incense
2. Indian (but not Thai) curry
3. Ferrets
4. Christmas trees
5. Diesel engines
6. Chrysanthemums
7. Cauliflower

Just let me know where to sign the petition, and we'll purge the world of all unclean smells, friend!