The Internet does wonderful things. It unites buyers with dealers. It offers practically countless photos of weed porn. And now it gives us cops smoking pot.
The Cut, a group of web producers behind the viral hit “Grandmas Smoke Weed for the First Time,” has released a new video, this time featuring three retired cops sparking up for the first time in years.
The officers, who are identified only by their first names, apparently worked in Washington State, where marijuana is legal. They say they didn’t bust potheads as cops, but one says he confiscated plenty of weed in his day.
“You know, I thought about that a lot, and as far as I can remember I never arrested anyone for it,” he says. “But I took a lot of pot away from people and threw it away in front of them. And I thought that was a bigger deterrent than actually writing them a criminal citation.”
“I never arrested anyone for it”
One of the officers worked in law enforcement for nearly 30 years after graduating from Washington State University. Another served seven years as a local reserve cop. The third was a longtime police academy instructor and freelance trainer.
All three apparently agreed to try pot again after many years at the behest of The Cut. The proceedings are mostly uneventful, aside from a deadpan sex joke or two, but the men seem to enjoy themselves.
The officers subject each other to “sobriety field tests” at several points after smoking increasing amounts of weed. One has trouble even before sparking up, not a ringing endorsement of roadside sobriety exams. Asked if marijuana is a gateway drug, one of the cops says yes while the other two say no. But they all say pot should be legal.
Marijuana is NOT a gateway drug
“If you look at it, everyone who is a heroin addict started off drinking milk,” the retired training officer says. “I mean, that’s the argument about marijuana, and I’m not sure that’s true.”
The same officer notes “it costs more to put somebody in prison – not jail but prison – than it costs to send them to Harvard.” Non-violent drug convictions generate a large portion of those costs.
“I think it should be legal,” another cop says. “I think it should be more widely available for medical reasons. It’s like the last piece of prohibition.”
Legalizing is also a good way to make the experience of smoking weed safer, one of the officers says. Among other things, it could remove dangerous product from the market.
“I mean some of the stuff you can get on the street now, you don’t know what is going to happen to you,” the officer says. “[With legalization], you’ve got a quality product and you know what it is, where it came from and what it’s going to do to you.”
