According to a split decision by the Minnesota Supreme Court, a person in possession of more than 25 grams of bong water that contains a controlled substance can be prosecuted for a first-degree drug crime.
While most people wouldn’t consider bong water to be a legitimate drug, a narcotics officer testified that users will sometimes save the bong water and drink it later. We just puked a little.
***Here’s an idea: If you find bong water that tests positive for drugs, chances are you’ll find some drugs hanging out somewhere close by. Are we getting that desperate in these drug wars to suspect that a normal person would actually drink bong water to get high? At that point we should almost have sympathy for drug addicts.
Actually, the point from the state’s perspective is to probably harass people when they can’t find drugs. No actual pot lying around- guess what, we just made up a new drug! JACKPOT! Plus, who knows what property they will get to seize and use for their own purposes, and in the paperwork at the end of the year, it won’t have an asterisk next to the list of convictions that says “Sure, it was a first-degree drug crime conviction, but it was f-ing bong water.”
This is the stupidest country in the world. Bring on President Palin. We deserve her.
(via)
CalD
I guess the lesson there is: use smaller bongs.
Just Some Fuckhead
I wonder if I can get a meth high from the public toilets…..
cleek
don’t bogart that bong water, dude!
The Republic of Stupidity
What the…???
That CAN’T be real…
Drink… BONG water…???
To… get… high…
Are they really THAT stupid in Minnesota?
***scratches head… furrows brow…***
Well… they did put Michelle Bachmann & Norm Coleman in office…
BARRASSO
Does this mean that testing positive for drugs in your urine is possession with intent, because you could pee in someones mouth you know.
Chuck Butcher
Since there is an entire industry (though governmental) built around illegal drug prosecutions it would seem entirely reasonable to be complete dickheaded morons about something like bong water. Think of the
childrenmoney…Chuck Butcher
ahahahaha, since I’m in FL for a week I get to play with actual real live BJers at 10:50 PM
Alan
That’s probably the nut of it.
I don’t think I live in the same United States my parents lived in.
scarshapedstar
One sip of bong water and you’ll be hooked for life!
It’s the gateway drug to Ayahuasca, don’t ya know…
scarshapedstar
Also, what do the cops do with confiscated bongs, I wonder?
cleek
there’s nothing like a Scotch and bongwater after a hard day of nothing much at all.
sometimes i make little bongwater ice cubes and drop them into people’s drinks. it’s like dosing them with LSD, except for the instantaneous vomiting.
General Winfield Stuck
This one cracked me up. This is the sort of thing that would happen back in the 60’s when the law was befuddled about pot and it’s users, but in 2009, geesus, what numbnuttery.
Eric U.
@cleek: if this keeps up, tonight will be the first time I’ve thrown up while laughing
Shinobi
I think there is a real philanthropic opportunity here. I think i’m going to start a foundation to provide the green for anyone desperate enough to even remotely consider drinking their bong water. It will be a service to humanity.
cleek
oh YouTube… is there nothing you can’t show us?
drinking bongwater
Xecky Gilchrist
Jeebus, this really reminds me of the bad old Bush I days when they were really scrambling to figure out new ways to punish potheads, doing stuff like issuing marijuana tax stamps so that when you didn’t have them when you got busted you could be whacked for that, too. Pity all that bullshit is still on the books.
I was ready to scream if I heard the phrases “get tough” or “crack down” one more goddam time – those were the only responses to the demon du jour back then, and through much of Clinton’s tenure, too.
I wonder if this is a knee-response to the administration’s decision not to harrass medicinal marijuana dealers?
kommrade reproductive vigor
But who will protect our children from the scourge of jenkem?!
What do you mean “We,” white man?
Martin
Speaking of the war on drugs – why hasn’t some good Republican pitcher taken A-Rod out with a fastball to the head?
I usually detest aggressive pitchers, but I’ll make an exception against steroid users. I’ll also support a line drive to the head of Pettitt under the same rule.
FTFY and fuck the umpires that enable them.
MikeJ
@Xecky Gilchrist: Uhm, The Marijuana Tax Stamp Act was passed in 1937. Not under Bush.
Xecky Gilchrist
knee-jerk response, I meant. Plus:
a narcotics officer testified that users will sometimes save the bong water and drink it later.
This nark is either lying or stupid. He sounds like some dick of a cop I saw on the news once who had just pulled over some poor bastard and was bragging to the news crew that he’d busted him with pot – said “Yuh, yuh, looks like some pretty good stuff, too, gotta lot of seeds.”
Xecky Gilchrist
@MikeJ: I’m thinking of yet another layer they passed around then, it may have been a purely Utah thing.
Fulcanelli
Any officer of the court who is stupid enough to waste even a second worrying about the narcotic effects and hence the illegality of fucking bong water should lose his job for wasting the public’s money and the court’s time.
Hilarity will ensue when John Stewart gets a hold of this one. Ye Gods.
burnspbesq
Whoever thought of this qualifies as “too f’in stupid to live.”
greetings from Royce Hall at UCLA. Waiting for Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Zakir Hussein to come on stage, and hoping the Halos can finish off the Yanks.
Xecky Gilchrist
@MikeJ: – it was this stuff I was thinking of, and it wasn’t under Bush, but it was enacted in 1988, so pretty close.
Wag
I think we should encourage everyone to recycle their bong water. I would propose evaporating the liquid, then snorting the residue. Think of it as the dope version of snuff …
JGabriel
You know how pretty much everything Republicans accuse people of is, in fact, something they’re doing themselves?
So, I’m wondering … when did GOPers start drinking bongwater? It certainly explains a lot.
.
Phoenix Woman
@Xecky Gilchrist: Sounds like something Sideshow Bob Fletcher’s boys would do. (Fletcher’s the Ramsey County (St. Paul) Sheriff who was leading scads of questionably-legal raids on homes prior to the RNC last year.)
SiubhanDuinne
This is a little off topic but… well… not really. I’d like to pause for a moment in blessed remembrance of the fact that it was *ezackly! one! week! ago!* that we were all, most of us, weeping with mirth and the best snark evah at the deranged postings of Michael “the helicopters aren’t laughing” Gass. (Heh, laughing gas.)
That was some wondrous crazy wild ride, one week ago Now.
Bob In Pacifica
Better to drink bongwater than toiletwater. That’s what makes humans better than dogs.
Jeff Berardi
I’m not sure either part of that statement is true.
MikeJ
Tank or bowl? I’d rather drink from the toilet tank than bongwater. In fact many disaster preparedness people remind that the toilet tank may be a rare source of clean water post earthquake, etc.
mclaren
As the military-industrial-police-prison complex continues to expand, more previously legal activities must be criminalized. The bongwater law seems no dumber than making the medicinal herb salvia divinorum a schedule I controlled substance.
Salvia is now illegal to possess and is treated as the equivalent of cocaine or heroin in the following states:
Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Virginia;
Only Legal When Not Intended for Human Consumption
Louisiana, North Carolina (beginning December 1, 2009), Tennessee
In order to keep growing, the military-industrial-police-prison complex must criminalize more and more harmless activities and felonize more and more innocuous substances. Before long, green tea and Mountain Dew will be declared Schedule I controlled substances. The arrests will exponentiate, the prisons will fill, more prison guards will be required, more police. And, of course, soon enough our failed and impotent military will be recalled from their losing wars overseas (where they can’t manage to defeat barefooted tribesmen who are armed with bolt-action rifles) to help in the War On Drugs.
Good news! Unemployment will soon be a thing of the past. Everyone will either be in prison, or a prison guard, or a drug cop.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: greetings from Royce Hall at UCLA. Waiting for Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Zakir Hussein to come on stage, and hoping the Halos can finish off the Yanks.
7-6 Angels. Allah be praised.
neal peart
Fortunately, we won’t have President Palin. Unfortunately, by 2016 the Republicans will offer up someone even worse. Nobody could have predicted…
geg6
Seriously? Bong water? Seriously? And that cop is totally full of shit. Someone told him that as a joke and he believes it. Not only believes it but says it publicly. Fucking bong water? Have people lost their minds? I was a stoner most of my life and I’ve never once even thought of drinking it. Not even if I’d gone months without and was desperate to get some. Bong water? Hell, the worst junkies I’ve ever known wouldn’t drink bong water. I hate the stupid in this country. Fucking bong water.
ellaesther
Stupidest country in the world?
Oh John, I am so grateful that I’m too tired to go out and find all the ways (or even a few of the ways) in which the other nations of the world compete with us for that title on a daily basis and bring them back here to present to you, as a gift.
I would submit that people, as a general and widely-applicable rule, are stupid. And, of course, stupid is as stupid does, as the wise man once said. Goes without saying, in fact.
But surely, SURELY, there are other nations on earth that are, at the very least, our peers in the doing-stupid department.
(I know. The post was actually about the bong water. Nice to meet you — I’m ellaesther, and I’m frequently distracted by turns of phrases or, indeed, single words. Feel free to carry on without me).
ellaesther
@SiubhanDuinne: This leads me to recall that I have not even once had a chance to use the phrase “…because I’m the cow on the tracks, that’s why,” as was my plan. I have GOT to work that into conversation.
/has gone overtly OT. Might maybe should go to bed/
Notorious P.A.T.
When I lock my door at night, it’s because I’m worried about people with bong water.
Mark S.
@ellaesther:
Well, as the only industrialized country without a national health care system (which allows us to spend almost twice as much as any other country and not cover one-sixth of our citizens), I would submit that, yes, we are the stupidest country in the industrialized world. Stupid, and damn proud of it.
Andy K
@mclaren:
This.
Tonal Crow
It’s truly absurd. Taking the Court’s decision to its logical conclusion, everyone is guilty of this “felony” because we all possess tap water, which certainly contains detectable illegal drug residues, and is, therefore, a drug-containing “substance…regardless of purity”.
It’s really, really, really time to wrap drug warriors and their fellow travellers in pink burkas, emblazon each with 76 different insults to Allah, and airdrop them into South Waziristan.
Anne Laurie
I was gonna suggest that Bachman and Coleman may have achieved their current cold-room-temperature IQs by drinking their bongwater, but I think JGabriel beat me to it.
And given how closely the ‘medicinal’ salvias resemble their garden-variety cousins, when do the local narcs start hanging around the big-box gardening centers every spring?
freelancer (itouch)
@mclaren:
For your consideration:
dailymotion.com/video/x9hfbj_tosh0-extreme-salvia-challenge_fun
this country’s drug laws are more retarded than sharia law concerning women’s skin.
Mark S.
@Tonal Crow:
I wouldn’t be surprised if the next case holds that a lighters and matches are drug paraphenelia.
And until every last drug warrior is dead, marijuana will be illegal. It’s hard to justify a war on your own citizens when the number of drug users goes down from 40 million to 2 million.
jrg
It’s a good thing we have our best and brightest working on this epidemic.
I wonder – has a narc ever had to drink bong water to get in with a group of potheads? It seems to me that if this is a common practice in Minnesota, they should be able to find at least one undercover pig who had to drink bong water to keep their cover from being blown.
This has to be one of the dumbest stories I’ve read in a long time.
asiangrrlMN
As a native of MN, I humbly apologize for the sheer stupidity of my state.
On the other hand, Senator Al Franken, bitchez!
flounder
Since something like 90% of our money supply is contaminated with traces of cocaine, do you suppose that under the MN Supreme Courts reasoning, if someone snorted coke at some point with the twenty I have in my pocket I could get convicted of being in possession of a controlled substance?
Maus
These are the people writing anti-drug classes for public schools. Is there any wonder why kids think drug education is a joke? How do these people stay employed?
Tattoosydney
@Tonal Crow:
We are all cocaine addicts.
Tattoosydney
@Tattoosydney:
Flounder beat me to it…
ellaesther
@asiangrrlMN: Also, exhibit B: Amy Klobuchar!
I thought of coming to Minnesota’s defense and mentioning Amy n’ Al, but a) I come from Illinois, home of Rod Blagoevich, so really, not so sure the folks would listen to me and b) having already defended the country as a whole — America! We’re no more stupid than anyone else! — I was fairly certain the folks might start throwing things at me.
But yeah! Amy n’ Al! Go Minnesota! Whoot!
(PS I have to look up the spelling on Klobuchar and Blagoevich every.single.time. that I type them. I really think that all these folks who come from foreign places should make their names easier for the rest of us to pronounce and spell! I’m just sayin’!).
ellaesther
@ellaesther: …and I spelled Blago’s name wrong EVEN WITH HELP!!
Andy K
@Maus:
It’s a positive feedback loop. Drug warrior politician passes laws like this and creates jobs for cops and prison guards, prison guards and cops vote for politician who created their jobs, then drug warrior passes more stupid laws creating more jobs for more cops and prison guards, and on and on…
PeakVT
The story reminds me of the title to this post, the contents of which, sadly, had little to do with the liquid in question.
Kryptik
@BARRASSO:
Don’t joke. The idiot officer, apparently, listed druggie urine as well as possible saved waste for a later high. So your joke may just be a reality even the Onion would call bullshit on.
Do we really, really, really need more excuses to lock up ‘them damn druggies’ and inflate our prisons even more? I mean, god, I know the case involved meth, which is less innocuous than pot (which was my assumption where Bong Water ins concerned) but my good green God….
cmorenc
@Fulcanelli
Except that the first handful of unlucky f*cks who get prosecuted under this decision by some jerkwad cops, blowhard-ass prosecutors, and lock ’em away judges will fail to see the humor in it at all. They won’t even get to see YouTube clips of John Stewart skewering the abysmal stupidity of it all while in jail.
Right Wing Extreme
WTF! We used to get the new smokers to drink the bong water as a prank back in “High” school. It was fun as hell to watch them puke. After reading the article, and seeing it involved meth I wasn’t surprised. There is not anything so stupid some tweeker somewhere won’t do it. I have a cop buddy who told me the hard up tweekers are saving their wizz and extracting the residual meth out of that. Apparently your body only uses a small portion of the drug then processes the rest out. So if the ice heads are drinking their own wizz or refining it down to reclaim the unused amount,drinking the bong water must be downright tasty.
Right Wing Extreme
Still a stupid ruling though.
asiangrrlMN
@ellaesther: I have mixed feelings on Klobuchar. She is much more centrist than I would prefer. She is not sold on the public option. Plus, she blocked my car for ten minutes in a parking lot while she yapped on her cell phone leaning against her car as her driver waited patiently for her to finish. I was not impressed.
MelodyMaker
Maybe the MN lege can pass a medical bongwater bill next session. Governor tire guage vetoed MM last year. (hint: don’t tell him how you make bongwater)
different church-lady
Now wait a minute: Massachusetts just reduced possession of less than an ounce to a misdemeanor.
Partition anyone?
MelodyMaker
yeah, I knew it was about meth. Tweekers don’t need to go to jail for that.
mclaren
@Andy K:
Bingo. In a crushed economy with no one hiring, expanding the drug war looks like a win-win to everyone but the victims. More police jobs, more prosecutor jobs, more prison guard jobs, more parole officer jobs, more money for law enforcement, and lots ‘n lots of that juicy asset forfeiture cash for tax-revenue-starved counties and states.
If you think I’m kidding about making various innocuous herbs illegal and turning them into Schedule I controlled substances, the legal equivalent of cocaine or heroin, think again. Herbal ecstasy has been made illegal in Florida and the FDA just issued an hysterical warning about it. Only a matter of time before dozens of other states make it illegal and start locking up people who possess the stuff as “dangerous drug dealers” and “scary drug felons.”
On the horizon? Laws criminalizing jimson weed (Oklahoma just made it illegal, other states will surely follow), cough syrup and of course the ongoing federal crackdown against doctors who prescribe painkillers for terminal cancer patients.
Yes, terminal cancer patients. People with terminal cancer have been handcuffed by masked helmeted SWAT teams of FBI agents for allegedly using too many prescription painkillers. Some terminal patients have killed themselves because they couldn’t stand the agony when their doctors refused to prescribe more pain meds.
See Doctors’ Group Advises Physicians to Avoid Treating Pain with Opiates, Cites Persecution of Pain Doctors — Tucson Case Illustrates Point.
There’s no limit to the drug war. It will just expand and expand and expand. Will cigarettes with excessive nicotine or menthol be next to get classified as a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance? Will SWAT teams break down the doors of people with terminal cancer and storm in with guns blazing to take out terminal cancer patients suspected of using too much morphine?
Only time will tell.
sognforaday
If it’s illegal, it’s illegal. Bongwater contains a controled substance…thus if you’re in possession of bong water, you’re in possession of a controlled substance. Not sure why this is a big deal.
Maus
@Kryptik: Someone get these kids hooked on jenkem!
freelancer (itouch)
@asiangrrlMN:
sweetie, I have ben Nelson and Mike “I voted for corporate rape” Johanns. We have no heroes. Hell, with Ellison and franken, I’d feel blessed.
Gaucho Politico
“Rauenhorst later added that users may consume urine as well.”
so the state may now collect your urine and if it tests positive, you may be convicted of felony possession because your urine is a mixture. its is a substance which contains the drug. bam. 5-10 baby.
Gaucho Politico
@ 64
its about justice. $300 fine versus seven years in prison. the difference there is a very big deal, both to society for the expense of imprisoning someone and to the life of that person.
AnotherBruce
I like this comment from the Linky:
“No more smuggling gallons of bong water in the back of my trunk over the border for me!”
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Fix’t.
I have been smoking weed since 1970 and I have only seen one person ever drink the contents of a bong. What induced him to drink it? Why I am glad you asked!
He was drunk out of his gourd. The fucking stoner had to get drunk to do it…lol! He was our lead singer and the guy was absolutely crazy when he got drunk.
Here’s a clue for the idiot pols/courts out there; the bong residue we are interested doesn’t mix with water. That and we use water to rinse that same residue to get rid of the remaining ash.
I have seen someone inhale some bongwater once but they had no idea it was going to happen. Picture a plastic bong, orange to red fade and about 12 to 14 inches tall. Take a hit in front of your friends (to show everything is safe!) then walk into the kitchen with it to pour a little dishsoap into the bong, return to the living room, pack a fresh hit and hand it to the victim. Everyone else in the room was in on the joke, of course.
Victim torches up the bong and we can see the suds building as he hits on it. What was funny was that when the suds are being created in a vacuum the bubbles are much smaller, so he didn’t pull any into his mouth as he was lighting and toking on it. But the second he let go of the carb and hit it hard to clear the bong, he sucked that shit right into his lungs and proceeded to hack his brains out. While he was hacking and gasping we were all just about choking to death with laughter. Dave (the friend we nailed) had it coming as he was a mean prankster himself. He laughed his ass off after he could breathe again, so it was all in good fun.
It didn’t help that the ganja was some really kick ass shit, boy was he ever wasted after that hit. Ahh the days/daze of being young and stupid…
Herb
Retarded. THC isn’t even water-soluble. I’m not even sure it’s scientifically possible to get high from drinking bong water.
Gravenstone
@flounder:
Controlled substance? No. Drug delivery device? youbetcha!!
Lupin
Apparently there are traces of coke on most of the dollar bills in circulation.
You want to arrest someone — anyone — test his cash for drugs.
Bingo!
Lupin
Apologies. I’d missed that someone had raised that very point earlier.
Never mind.
RememberNovember
On the plus side, there is legality for medical marijuana in some states. It is a see-saw of logic sometimes.
Jack
I had a store near a high school, which sort of meant that at any given moment, there was at least one kid burning trees behind my dumpster.
Couldn’t have them there, doing that (liability, my job), didn’t want them arrested. So I’d call a local cop on his cell, and he’d come down and just ask them to leave.
He hated marijuana enforcement. It was a personal mission of his to never, ever bust someone for pot.
Win/win. Kids usually go away when a cop asks them not to get the store manager in trouble with the corporate office, but the cop doesn’t elevate to arrests and paperwork.
And word spread that I wasn’t a wicked dickhead – since I always called the same officer, and he never made a pot arrest. So they started smoking up elsewhere.
He was a multi-year veteran of LE, not some rookie snotnose looking to buck up his arrest count. But there were a lot of guys like him.
I wonder if that’s what’ll happen come bong water time, that cops with better things to do with turn a blind eye. Or if the lawn order idgits will win out again…
Lee
Having sat on grand jury for three months, I am not at all surprised by this. The officer’s career/police department profit incentive for the drug task forces is too great to let any possible arrest and seizure go by. Blunts, rolled aluminum foil, pen tubes, steel wool – all were used as evidence or contraband.
Heck, we saw a case where a mentally ill, homeless crack addict “confessed” to trading a “rock” for some stolen items rather than admitting shoplifting them . He got indicted on a distribution felony.
Jack
70% of prison inmates are not Caucasian. IIRC, the highest rate of incarceration is for Native Americans, second highest for Blacks (who comprise the largest percentage of inmates, altogether).
This country was built on the stolen land of one population, and on the backs of the other.
And it is still sticking it to them, of which the drug war is a signature part.
Plus, the money, oh, the money…
Paul in KY
I know some real stoners (being from KY) & NOBODY has ever voluntarily drunk bong water. These people might drink Aqua Velva on occassion, they might snort vodka up their nose, but they would rather drink their own piss than bong water.
Gus
As someone who has smoked pot for 25 years and lived in Minnesota for most of them, I can testify that Minnesota pot smokers do not drink bong water. THC isn’t fucking water soluble, so the only drugs they’ll find is the bits that get inhaled into the water. Christ are narcs stupid. No wonder they’re losing the drug war so badly
Ripley
And re: similar comments. Some states now charge kids with MIP if they blow positive for alcohol, even though there’s no drinkable packaged alcohol in their possession.
In Michigan, any trace of THC in your system while driving is considered DUI, even if it’s days/weeks old lingering traces and you’re stone sober when pulled over.
re: dollar bills, etc., on a rare viewing of Cops, I saw a guy busted for coke. They took the rolled up $20 bill and tagged it as paraphernalia.
I don’t partake of anything beyond alcohol, but I believe some of these drug policies are freakishly distorted and utterly ridiculous.
Larv
Okay, I’ll actually admit to having drunk bong water, as nobody else seems to have done so. But it wasn’t to get high, it was because our dorm room was on the 4th floor and there was no bathroom on the floor to dump it. So we made up a game where the loser had to drink the bong water to keep it from stinking up the room. I don’t recall it being the tastiest thing ever, but it’s not puke-inducing. I can’t guarantee that it doesn’t get you high, as we were always already high as kites by the time any bong water was drunk, but it seems extremely dubious. Although the case in question is about meth, and I don’t have any experience there. Maybe meth bong water really does get you high. More likely, a jonesing meth-head is probably desperate enough to try anything.
Paul in KY
Larv, you must have been one of those ECFHs (Extremely Clean Fucking Hippies) if your used bong water would not make you retch. The water in mine might stay in there for several days & if you could drink that without puking, you must be a space alien or a robot or you completely lack a gag reflex.
Joshers
This was not about pot. If you go to the link and actually read the article, the police arrested a woman who was smoking methamphetamine out of bong, not pot. Now, I’m not sure if that makes much of a difference, but this wasn’t some stoner kid. It was a woman who was using meth with her 12 and 8 year old kids in the home.
Larv
@Paul in KY:
Well, part of it was that we weren’t dirty hippies at all. More like stoner punks. The reason hippies are so dirty and lazy isn’t the pot at all; it’s sitting there listening to those interminable jam band “songs” that zones them out. There’s no time for showers when that four-hour bootleg cut of “Dark Star” takes up half your day. I’m pretty sure it kills brain cells, too. :)
But yeah, we changed the bongwater pretty regularly. You would too if you knew you might be drinking it.
Jack
@Joshers:
So for that reason there should be ruling/law that obligates prosecution for bong water, at the felony level?
Paul in KY
Larv, I’ll totally agree that if I knew there was a likelyhood that I might have to drink the bong water, it would be changed after every hit. Good point about the hippies. Also.
agio
THC, the active ingredient in marijuana is NOT water soluble. What gets stuck in the bongwater is everything else.
If someone was filling their bong with olive oil or melted lard then it might be a different story. But I have to believe that nobody is that stupid, even in the state that brought us Michelle Bachman.
BK
I’ve been carefully watering my wheat with Bong water. Then I’m going to make the wheat into flour. Then I’ll make the flour into brownies!
Joshers
My point was that this wasn’t some innocuous pothead who got busted with the bong he was using to smoke weed. The original post and most of the comments in the threat assumed that this involved pot. It was meth, which I think most people agree is a completely different animal.
The distinction may not matter, but if you’re going to ridicule the prosecutor and the court for the ruling, you should probably have the facts straight.
Solly Hofman
there’s nothing like a Scotch and bongwater after a hard day of nothing much at all.
Come now, don’t insult our intelligence. Everyone knows Scotch is smoky to start with; no need to mix it with bongwater.
TuffsNotEnuff
FOLLOW THE MONEY — to the privatized prisons, where there’s a buck to be turned with every incarceration.
Sure, its a Palin-crazy country. But going after marijuana and bong water owners is about $$$$$. Nothing but $$$$$.
shaun parker
dude i can’t even smell it without retching. It tastes terrible. I mean HORRID. If you manage to swallow it, and keep it down, congrats, but I say pics or it didn’t happen. Or you recycled your water daily.
MNMan
Sure, this CASE was about meth bong water, but read the decision–it would apply to pot bong water just the same.
Now, for those who think our Supreme Court is high on bong water itself, the majority explained that they were following the plain terms of the statute, which says that a mixture or substance containing a controlled substance, regardless of purity, is a controlled substance. So blame the statute, I’m sure they’d say, we’re just doing our judicial jobs.
But jeez, when the result of statutory interp is that absurd, the judges are supposed to be the ones who get all reasonable and set forth case law that puts a fence between absurdity and reality. That’s what the dissent tried to do; as they pointed out, “regardless of purity” was meant to spare police the task of figuring out, say, how much coke in a bag was baking soda and how much was the real thing. Calling bong water a drug flies in the face of the purpose of Minnesota’s drug laws, which was to punish people more if they had more actual drugs.
The majority doesn’t really think bong water is a drug. But they think the legislature tied there hands on the issue. The dissent got it right, and for the right reason. And, as a proud Vikings fan, I note that Purple People Eater Alan Page was on the side of sanity. SKOL!
I own a house. I smoke pot on occasion. I’m sure there’s some trace amount of pot residue in some corner or crook of the place. All I can say now is, if the cops weigh my house, I’m headed up the river forever.
BongCrosby
I was going to say something relevant to the discussion here, but I forgot what it was.
emmitt mak
@Alan:
I know what property they will seize and use for their own purposes… anything they want. And they do. I was caught with over an ounce of some pot at my home by an ass investigator who wanted me to rat someone out and the police stole everything in the house for themselves to take to their homes, and the house was taken by the courts. It is all about the money for them. And the time I was in jail… just more money for them and their freinds in the human warehousing business, another way to profit, on the backside of this drug war. See this article:
blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/breaking-news/lapd-california-medical-mariju/
The police, because of the drug war, have become an army of occupation, and in many neighborhoods and homes, an enemy to be feared. I am not ignorant, I know that we need security, but what we really need are peace officers, not thugs.
AhabTRuler
I’m not most people, but I’ll bite. Yes, Meth is completely the same animal, and the recent anxiety about it has been the same old moral panic recycled over and over again.
AhabTRuler
Hey, the Wa
AhabTRuler
Hey, the War on Drugs has managed to eliminate the usage of certain drugs:
lojasmo
A touch of clarification here:
This does not apply to “bong” water. This is in relation to methamphetamines.
Up to 45 grams of marijuana is a petty misdemeanor here. Of course 25 grams of water tainted with THC would not fall under this ruling.
lojasmo
Also, as an aside, transferring up to 45 grams of marijuana (without remuneration) is also a petty misdemeanor (fine of $200)
Tyrone Hed
Actually, I knew a guy in college who always drank bong water. When someone knocked over their bong before he could drink it, he acted like it was a tragedy.
Bill Hicks
lojasmo, unfortunately 25 g of water is equal to 25 ml of water. Many/most bongs have at least 45 ml of water in them making this rise above a petty misdemeanor even for marijuana. First they came for the meth users…;)
Tom S.
My roomate in college made a water pipe with stuff looted from the chem lab. We’d fill the flask with ice and Jack Daniels, smoke a few–or more than a few–bowls and then drink the contents of the flask. The screen filtered out the solids. I might add that we were not and are not retards, but conventional and solid citizens–with advanced degrees–and marriages (one each) and normal children.
Is drinking bong water like masturbation? Many people do it, but no one will admit it?
evil is evil
I agree with the Republicans. The government is too big. We need to fire anyone that ever comes into any court anywhere in the US with this type of horseshit and then pull any license they have for anything permanently.
I want people that this makes sense to, to be the ones digging in the ditch to make sure it drains.
The absolutely total insanity of this will surely make millions of graduate studies in about 300 years under “the stupidest government ever.”