The Misinformation Age
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From The Seattle Times:Four men who told police they'd moved to Seattle because they thought it was legal to smoke pot openly here were detained this week by police for marijuana-related offenses.It reminds me of an episode of COPS I once saw (and I paraphrase...it was a long time ago): in some neolithic state like Tennessee, police pulled over a man who they found to be in possession of a partially smoked marijuana cigarette. As they proceeded to arrest him, the pathetic suspect made a comment to the officer along the lines of: "Man, out west they just write you a ticket for this."
[...]
The men told police they had moved from Wyoming to Seattle because a friend of theirs told them it was legal to possess and smoke marijuana here.
Indeed...and often less than that. The West Coast has developed a reputation that calls to pot smokers near and far: a utopia for open drug use in epic Summer Of Love proportions, where everyone's so stoned that they sit on the beach listening to reggae all day, and police officers who catch you in the act offer up a high five instead of a jail cell.
A literal pipe dream. Unfortunately, utopias don't exist (San Francisco is probably the closest we're going to get to one anytime soon). Sure, the drug laws out here in Seattle are progressive...but not that progressive. If these geniuses had taken the 10 seconds to Google "Seattle marijuana law," they might not have been driving on a busy downtown street in broad daylight, violating traffic laws and smoking weed...and they almost certainly wouldn't have moved more than 1,000 miles across the country to do so.
