on a Saturday have in common? In each place, I found it necessary to wade through an acrid haze of marijuana smoke in order to get to where I needed to go.
In Beacon, just south of Poughkeepsie, I was walking past shop after shop touting sustainability, green everything and healthy lifestyles —which I thought to be fabulously ironic considering the burn in my lungs.
Back in 1918, the nation was reeling from a far worse pandemic than the current one, but quite happy about the outcome of the Great War and poised for a Quixotic economic boom.
And in Washington, the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is manning a money cannon that he fires at every problem we are facing, and even a few of his own creation.
And, as we roar into a catch-up summer where many seem to feel that they need to somehow make up for the lost fun of a COVID-19-infused 2020, it appears that we all must face the coming haze.
Frankly, I’m fine with that, since I’ve seen the hideous and cancerous results of smoking and would be happy to see the practice disappear in a puff of nonexistence.
But, at the same time, you can trace the plummeting trajectory of cigarette smoking and see that it intersects with the sharply rising trajectory of marijuana smoking.
I don’t care what kind of noxious fumes you choose to allow into your lungs, I just don’t want to share in them involuntarily.
But for me, and more people than you might expect, we don’t like the smell of it.
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