Vegas Sculptor’s Blog

Well it’s that time of year again. Christmas shopping for my wife and children.

A word of warning is in order at this point. My article today is probably more suited for a 15 minutes piece because it’s my opinion, but then this space would be empty so instead, you get a dose of my holiday cheer!

I think Scrooge had the right idea, he just got bad press. I mean, I really feel like “Bah Humbug” a lot this time of year.

It used to be so easy. I could think of a million things my wife wanted. The kids were easy and you could buy a whole shopping cart full of toys for a reasonable price. But now I’ve been married for so long it seems like I’ve bought everything I can think of for my wife, and buying for the girls means taking out a second mortgage just to buy a couple of items.

This year one daughter wants an Apple ipod . The other daughter wants a new Wacom Tablet . I had no idea what this was, but it’s a computer art gadget so it’s expensive.

The other reason I get bummed this time of year has to do with the constant bickering over the religious aspect of the holiday.

Now the world is made up of many different races and religions. This is a fact of life. Everyone has a right to celebrate whatever and whenever their religion dictates. The fact is that the period from Thanksgiving though New Years is dominated by an orgy of spending that Christians like to call Christmas.

Now I know that there is also Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in December, but we all know that Christmas is the reason for the shopping boom.

The problem is that non-Christians have decided that the mention of Christmas is offending. It’s alright to talk about, and publicly promote, any other religious holiday, just not Christian holidays.

In an effort to keep from offending anyone, a lot of retailers are trying to avoid any mention of the actual word Christmas. They are busy wishing everyone “Happy Holidays” or some other euphemism for the season. Nobody displays the nativity scenes we saw as children. I’m sure the atheists would go into cardiac arrest if a big retailer like Walmart were to put a living nativity scene in the parking lot.

But why not? If the celebration of Christmas is the reason that retail sales soar this time of year, why don’t retailers try harder to lure shoppers in by decorating their stores with full Christmas imagery including depictions of the birth of Christ? Don’t you think they would have more to gain than lose? Is it that the retailers know that those of us who celebrate Christmas will continue to do so by overspending no matter what? Has the anti-Christmas minority been so vocal that the retailers really believe they have a lot to lose by offending them? And why should they be offended anyway?

I think that if you want Christmas celebrated as a Christian holiday then you should really pay more attention to the “reason for the season”. If you want to celebrate it only as a reason to buy gifts for friends and family, that’s fine too, the link to Christianity shouldn’t bother you one way or the other. If you are an atheist and are offended by the Christian and Jewish symbolism of the season, I’m afraid everyday is going to just piss you off so you need to stay away from the mall!

Oh, and if you complain, you better show up for work on the 25th. After all it’s just another day without any significance to you isn’t it?

The local television news had a report about a bond issue that will be voted on. The funds would be used to build a new library.

As is usual in a story like this, the reporter interviewed people about their thoughts on the subject. One of the women they questioned said that while she was all for a new library, she didn’t think the money should be spent until a new county jail was built.

To me this sounded like she would prefer to incarcerate the current generation than educate the next.

Of course the problem of jail space is a big one in the United States. We have one of the highest incarceration rates of any country in the world. A large portion of those incarcerated are there because of drugs. If we let the drug users out of jail, there would be plenty of space for violent criminals.

The U.S. war on drugs has been going on for over 30 years now. According to an article in Rolling Stone, in that time we have spent over $500 billion (341 billion EUR) and drugs are as cheap and plentiful as ever.

The article titled “How America Lost the War on Drugs” is quite long, but very enlightening.

One thing the article points out is how, repeatedly, over the years the politicians have given in to the urge to appear tough on crime and voted to punish users rather than treat them.

In the early 1970’s President Nixon appointed a panel that recommended the decriminalization of casual marijuana use and even considered buying up the world’s entire supply of opium to prevent it from being converted into heroin. Nixon took a different course however calling narcotics “public enemy number one in the United States”. Instead of decriminalization his administration strengthened penalties for drug dealers and devoted federal funds to bolster prosecutions.

This was a tactic that has been followed by every administration since. For every study that recommended education and treatment, more laws and longer sentences were enacted against users.

This was coupled with an unending war against growers in South and Central America. Every time one area of drug production was broken up the production simply moved to another country. Every time one method of smuggling was disrupted, another method was employed.

And still the casual use of drugs was resulting in overcrowding of the country’s jails. Casual use of marijuana has remained pretty steady and the price and availability has too.

Contrast this to England where, in 2004, the government reclassified the use of cannabis allowing a policy of “confiscate and warn”. In the years since that decision, the use of pot among young people has dropped.

An article in The Guardian reported, “The Home Office figures showed the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds who had used cannabis in the past year fell from 25% when the change in the law was introduced to 21% in 2006/07 - still about 1.3 million users.”

However things might be about to change in England. According to the article “Gordon Brown has ordered a fresh review of the legal status of cannabis after warnings of links between much more potent strains coming on to the market and mental illness.”

When will politicians realize that being “tough on crime” is not the same as being smart? When will the citizens realize that the only way to stop drugs is to eliminate the demand? How long will it take to understand that education and treatment of addicts is the only way to reduce demand?

And how long will it take politicians and parents to understand that you can’t sit there with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other and lecture kids about the evils of drugs??