The potheads around here in the valley outnumber the police 10,000 to 1. Every few blocks has a dealer network for the stuff. Watching the monosyllabic, white trash teens, wearing the valley uniform - black shirts & jeans, while grunting and speaking with "wut up" ebonics while walking daily home from school to the local pot dealer's house is mute testimony to the white trash moral ethic. Watching the AZ valley's nightmare opposite of "soccer" moms take the family van to pick up drugs from the dealers house is equally educational.

WAY WAY, too many parents here are potheads with tatoos, S&M neck bands and give fuel to the stereotype of the valley's wastes of carbon. How is it even possible that you can teach your kids the value of a clear mind if you don't have one? Kids imitate their parents. If their parents smoke and drink - 50:1 are the odds they will too. If their parents do pot and they think their parents are squares or losers - they graduate quickly to the meth. Schools here have constant meth issues and anti-meth bill boards are regularly vandalized because meth use is so high. It's ironic that Art mentions the water supply - Phoenix is one of the only major cities that does not disclose the amount of drug residue in the water supply. Meth makers are so prevalent that the water supply here is poisoned by the tons of these mega-poisonous drugs flushed down the sinks and bathtubs of the meth houses and it ends up in the water supply to alarmingly high - but unregulated by law - levels. Don't ever drink the water here. Don't buy drinks bottled around here that use the local water supply.

Arguing with current or former drug users is a total waste of effort. A large part of their self-esteem is couched in burying those aspects of their lives with justifications. Tear those from them and the snarling wild animal hardly concealed underneath will bare its fangs. This thread (and even more ironically Bowsers!) is mute testimony to this process.

The future of the US is the tatoo shop, smoke shop, check cashing place, bar and hard drug dealer all side by side in the same run down strip malls. The average income will be squat. The US (taxpayers) will naturally be expected to care for all these future addicts.

"Vice" is a word folks desperately want to make obsolete.

And in any society, when a "vice" is practiced by a majority -this soon happens. Each vice legalized opens the door to the next one...and the next one... and very soon the society sinks like an anvil in the sea. I'd argue this depression is proof it's already happened, but I always like to think any deep dip in the public IQ is reversible.

Lots of folks try to prove my supposition wrong.

;-)