No Smoking, or Vaping. But Pot's Probably Perfectly Fine

This is probably another in a line of my apocalyptic entries. Perhaps it  is not quite so dramatically apocalyptic. But these days pretty much everything points to the apocalyptic to me.

When I was a kid, living a privileged life in a Bronx tenement (it really was a nice one bedroom apartment for the three of us and I got the bedroom), whenever your building was starting to slide into decrepitude, signs would appear.  Not figurative signs, but the real ones. The signs would be posted on the brick walls telling the tenants, and their children who played in the courtyard, what they must and must  not do. Things like, "No loitering" and "No ball playing". While I have always followed rules, something which these days I question when the rules are insanely inconsistent, in this case, like the other kids, I continued to bounce my Spaulding pink ball, and sometimes on the very sign that forbade me to do so. That is probably the extent of my intentional rebelliousness to date. 

As so many others, our building, in which my grandfather had actually once been Superintendent when my mother and her sisters were young, fell into complete disrepair. The patches of grass surrounded by lovely wrought iron was pulled out and the ground painted over. The dog poo was about everywhere. The garbage often did not get collected. And the landlord occasionally tried to burn the building down. The good old days.

I was reminded of all this when I came home to my West Hollywood Condo Building today. I noticed a sign taped on the glass entrance. 

I took this picture. I wondered, "Does that include pot?" because in this building there is a great deal of pot smoking. I often will be sitting outside on my terrace when an invisible cloud of scent comes over me. The smell of skunk to me. Between you, me and the lamp post, I'd would rather the smell of tobacco over the stench of pot. But there you are. I lack the progressive gene. I have actually never tried the stuff. I have, however, been beneficiary, if that is what one might call it, of a lot of second hand pot. Of course, we must extend the prohibition to vaping. If you were to say that some vaping can be done without the use of nicotine and thus all of the deficits carried with tobacco, the default is, "No, that's bad too." We don't want to encourage the idea of smoking to impressionable teenagers. It might distract them from the abortions they can get without parental permission.  Let us add to the things I cannot do in my own space. Don't use too much electricity, the forbidden amount determined by LADWP. You may lease your property but only if you do so for a full year. I thought of one of my neighbors, a man on the first floor, from some Eastern European country where they are probably still smoking with abandon, who probably took his first draw when he was 10. In the past, where it was only our CC and R's that forbade smoking and noise after 11 (which young people you know, don't follow under any circumstance), he was sort of grandfathered in to being allowed to smoke. Looks like he might be in trouble now or there is inequity in the application of the rule. Will someone complain? Not me. I only care about the insanity from a philosophical point of view when it comes to smoking. Since I don't smoke, I have no stake in this skirmish. 

I forgot to get my mail, distracted by the door's missive. I came down again. I realized there was another item posted on the other side of the door.

Ahhhh we have the word on high. The City. It is, at least one can so interpret it, based on the plain language of the posted notice that only tobacco is impermissible. They only use the word "Tobacco". 

Note, that right now you can still smoke tobacco in your apartment and on your exclusive use balcony/terrace assuming your building is not new, where then you cannot.  But as of 2023, nope nope nope. You cannot even smoke in your dwelling unit or your crummy old balcony. Well, tobacco. Smoke your pot up with abandon inside, outside, anywhere your heart desires. 

In some years--I will probably be long dead---people will hear about all the lawsuits over pot smoking and what was known all along, that it was far worse than tobacco, and that it was a gateway drug, and lots of people that didn't need to be died because of it. Worse than tobacco ever did. 

By that time, the state will have bugs in your apartments and be telling you what to eat, when to get up and what thoughts to have. Some people think we are already there.