I voted. It feels good to get it done, even if my son is going to "cancel my vote."

[NNadir]

One of my happiest memories as a child is when my parents would drive back from voting - they always took me along - and my mother, a swing voter, would tell my father that she "canceled his vote," by voting for the Democrat.

In the good old family tradition, my oldest son announced he would be "cancelling my vote."

All three of us here at home, and the son away who will be voting in PA, are voting straight Democratic for all candidates, from Biden/Harris on down, but I voted against all three ballot initiatives on the NJ ballot, including the one that would legalize marijuana.

I don't believe that people should go to jail for possessing, smoking or even (privately) growing it, but I don't want legal pot stores here.

My son was a little upset with me and gave me the "alcohol is worse than pot" lecture that one hears, and while I'm not sure that the premise of that argument is wrong, I retorted that pancreatic cancer is worse than breast cancer, but this doesn't support an argument to make breast cancer easier to get. (To my knowledge, he has never smoked pot, but I don't want to make it easier for him to try.)

(He didn't like that.)

But the important point is that both my wife and dropped our ballots in the special drop boxes NJ has distributed, and there's two more votes for Joe and Kamala, and for the rest of the Democratic ticket, and two more to go from my family, my vote cancelling son and my "no pot on the ballot" son in PA.

I feel great!

[leftieNanner]

1. Yahoo and High Five!

We will get our ballots next week and I plan to drive them down to the district office myself.

As far as the legal pot issue goes, it was passed in Oregon a few years ago and there have been lots of unintended consequences. The smell of the pot farms is disgusting. Smells like skunk. So if you live out in the country next to a pot grow, you have that smell with you for a good portion of the year. Plus, because it's not legal everywhere, some of the pot grows are more extensive than they are supposed to be and this brings in nefarious folks, high ugly barbed wire fences, and large unfriendly protector dogs. This is also because it's a cash business (feds still won't allow pot growers to deposit their money in the bank) it can bring in robbers. Another reason for the large dogs and high fences.

I voted no here and now many people wish they had too. Good luck in NJ.

[NNadir]

2. The first I saw of it was in Amsterdam.

It kind of broke my heart, since it's one of those structurally beautiful European cities.

I was there on a business trip, and my clients wanted to do the "libertarian tour," pass the pot dens, and those horrible prostitution houses, where the women - most very young, still in their teens I'd guess, and many obviously from the third world - were displayed like merchandise.

It broke my heart...it broke my heart.

There were a lot of stoners in the streets, doing nothing...nothing...nothing...which was the problem, the vacancy of it all.

What exactly was the point?

You cannot be my age - I'm a baby boomer - without having been around pot and its users. If one insists on doing that...well...I don't think prison is appropriate, but I don't want it to be easier to do that. If it has to exist, and apparently it does, I like it better hidden away. I don't like cigarette posters, and I don't want to add posters to them.

[LizBeth]

3. Well, I live in Oregon and I have not seen any of the issues you mention.