Searching for a Home :: Personal Narrative Essays

Searching for a Home I arrived "home" on Sunday night, from a two week vacation, which was nice in that we went to very nice places, and in that I had, for the first time in a while, the sort of vacation which did not involve a lot of driving around and which really succeeded in making me feel that I was gone, out of my real life, away, for a while. However, I did not succeed in accomplishing the mental task I had set out for myself for these two weeks. This task was I suppose a variant of the usual mental task I set for myself while traveling, anywhere, even for a short distance or a short time: to look at my life from as much distance as I can, to get a sense of the shape of the forest, removed from the detail/muddle of tree after tree, and to see what, if anything, needs to be changed, and maybe even how to change it. For me, actually, there always seems to be something that needs to be changed. This time in my travels, the questions I was trying to resolve, the new perspective I was trying to arrive at--not, by a long shot, for the first time--had something to do with the quotation marks I've put around the word home. To put it very simply, I don't feel at home here. I'd like to go home, but I'm not sure where that is. To make matters worse, I've been wondering about this for several years, like maybe fifteen or twenty years, trying one place after another. Nothing seems to fit. The fact that I know that this is at least 50% an internal problem (i.e., at least as much a matter of where I am psychologically as physically) does not, alas, help me to answer the question. It's clear to me I've come to focus on the question of place (the central question here being, where would I like to live for the rest of my life? where could I see myself living?) in the way that some people focus on Who Is the Right Person? or When/How/Why Must I Grow Up? Not that I don't obsess over these little matters, too, just that they don't take the central place in my reflections, most of the time.

The Advantages of Being Legal

There are many arguments on the question of whether or not to legalize marijuana. The benefits of legalizing marijuana include its medicinal value and its many uses to produce commercial products like paper, rope, oil, textiles, and canvas. Another good reason to legalize marijuana is that hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug offenders are overpopulating prisons, costing taxpayers millions of dollars. Legalization would also put marijuana dealers out of business and it would bring revenue to the government like alcohol and tobacco does. Some opposition to legalizing marijuana is that traffic atalities would increase, and that more people like school teachers and bus drivers would be smoking legally purchased marijuana. They also believe that more young people would smoke more marijuana. Marijuana is medicine and has been used as medicine for thousands of years to treat a wide variety of ailments. It is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known. Marijuana is often useful in the treatment of cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and chronic pain. For cancer patients, marijuana alleviates the nausea, vomiting, and loss f appetite caused by chemotherapy treatment. It does the same for people with AIDS. By reducing intraocular pressure, marijuana helps slow or halt the gradual increasing eye pressure suffered by glaucoma patients. Marijuana reduces the muscle pain and spastically caused by multiple sclerosis. It also helps some patients control their bladders. With some epileptic patients, marijuana prevents seizures. Marijuana is also a very effective pain reliever. Hemp, a plant mainly grown for its use as a fiber source, is from the same plant that produces marijuana. It is different because industrial hemp is grown with minute amounts of delta-9 and tetrahydrocannibinol, abbreviated as THC, which is the element in marijuana that gives the high sensation’. Industrial hemp is one of nature’s strongest and most versatile agricultural crops. It can be used to produce various things such as textiles, paper, clothing, plastics, cosmetics, food stuffs, insulation, and animal feed. Hemp seeds can be used to make high protein foods and the oil can be used to produce non-toxic paint, varnish, detergent, diesel fuel, ink, and lubricating oil. One acre of hemp produces as much fiber as two to three acres of cotton and one acre also produces as much paper as two to four acres of trees. The advantage of using paper products produced by hemp is that hemp’s growing cycle is around one hundred days, while it takes trees years to grow to produce the same amount of paper. Hemp was cultivated in the U. S. until 1937, when the Marijuana Tax Act outlawed marijuana. In 1942 the government encouraged American farmers to cultivate hemp for the war effort, but then in 1955 prohibitionists had reasserted a total ban on production. Now the DEA, Drug Enforcement Administration, remains firmly opposed to any notion of revising the federal laws to allow hemp’s domestic cultivation. Every year 400,000 Americans are arrested for marijuana and thousands of them are sent to prison. Marijuana users and dealers account for sixty percent of all prisoners today. Because of new anti-drug laws, these prisoners can be jailed for up to thirty years, and most are, even for minor crimes. Federal and State governments are spending billions to build more prisons to house hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug offenders. Legalization would kill the black market for marijuana. Marijuana sales would be regulated by state and federal governments. It would also help the economy by a reduction in law enforcement costs, and police could focus more on dangerous drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and crystal meth. Some people who oppose the legalization of marijuana say that traffic fatalities would increase. The myth is that 40% of drug related emergency room visits are marijuana related. The fact is that this statistic purposely excludes the legal drug of alcohol, a drug notorious for causing violence and accidents. A marijuana related emergency room visit does not mean marijuana caused the incident. If the patient admits to using marijuana days or weeks before the incident or if someone involved in the incident is found only possessing marijuana, then the emergency room admission is counted as marijuana related. At first, the amount of people using marijuana may increase. The idea that people like school teachers, day care providers, and bus drivers smoking legally purchased marijuana and endangering others is something that should not be worried about. Do these people drink alcohol before going to work or smoke igarettes during work They are mostly responsible adults and if they choose to smoke the legally purchased marijuana, they would do it responsibly. Most recreational marijuana smokers will continue to smoke even if marijuana is never legalized. I was forced to temporarily quit smoking because of the system. I used to occasionally smoke until my room was searched at the college I attended freshman year. I felt that my personal rights were violated when every room on my hall was searched after someone set off a firework. The search was conducted by a R. A. a person who is my age, and it was done without my roommate or I present. Nothing was left in plain sight, in fact, all of the paraphernalia was found in a backpack which was in a filing cabinet that was in my closet. I felt as though I did not commit a crime, but as though I was the victim. As former president Lincoln said, Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and a makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.

Racial Profiling is a Valuable Policing Tool Essay

Former President Clinton called for a national crackdown on racial profiling and ordered federal law enforcement authorities to begin an investigation. (1) Vice President Al Gore promised the NAACP that should he become president eliminating the practice of racial profiling by the nations police departments would be a top priority. (2) New Jersey Governor Christy Whitman fired Police Superintendent Carl Williams after the 35-year veteran trooper said in an interview that minorities are more likely to be involved in drug trafficking. (3) In the case of State of New Jersey v. Pedro Soto, et. al., the attorney for the black defendants moved to suppress evidence from traffic stops deemed to be discriminatory enforcement of the traffic†¦show more content†¦Prior to making a decision, people never obtain all of the information available or possible to obtain. For example, all prefer low prices to higher prices for a given purchase, but we never canvass all prices. In choosing a mate, we never obtain all the information about our prospective spouse. In these and other decisions, we decide that a given amount of information is enough and we search no more. Consider the following example of how much information is acquired prior to a decision. Suppose upon entering a room one is unexpectedly confronted with the sight of a fully grown tiger. A fairly reliable prediction is that person would endeavor to leave the area in great dispatch or otherwise seek safety. All by itself that prediction is uninteresting. More interesting is the explanation for the behavior. Would the persons decision to run be based upon any detailed information held about that particular or would the decision be based upon the persons information about how he has seen other tigers behave, what his parents have told him about tigers or tiger folklore? Most likely the individuals decision would be based upon the latter. He simply pre-judges or stereotypes the tiger. 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