Terms Which Have Disappeared

[LizzieMaine]

One of the cards the Anti-Cigarette League ladies used to hand out to slaves of the foul weed.

 

[MisterCairo]

I remember watching this many times as a kid:

 

[HudsonHawk]

Hadn't thought about this, but how do tobacco companies attract young, new managers? Are there any 20 years old who want to work for Big Tobacco? My guess is pay does the trick, but it must be higher than comparable companies' pay as I bet there are a lot of kids who would never consider even working for a tobacco company.

I would suspect this is a major issue. We have a lot of young people who turn down 6-figure entry level salaries, with a pension, because they're afraid of what their friends will think of them working for an oil company (while they drive their cars and play on their gadgets made of plastic). I'd imagine it's a whole lot worse working for Big Tobacco.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I remember watching this many times as a kid:

For some bizarre reason the print of that cartoon shown by our local station's kiddie host was dubbed into Spanish. "Los ninos pequenos no deben fumar!"

 

[ChiTownScion]

I try to be open minded about things: unrestrained by the fetters of prejudice and willing to tolerate the choices of others. But I have to confess that smoking is one area where I'm pretty close minded. Watching my mother die inch by inch, day by day, over twenty years, and at the end fighting for the next breath from an oxygen tank.... yeah, that has a lot to do with it. Even broke off an engagement over it.

Last month I attended the funeral of my favorite female cousin. Lovely gal: used to babysit for me when I was a mere tot. I was at her wedding and the christening of her two lovely daughters. We were very close. The backache she complained of turned out to be stage four cancer, and it had spread just about everywhere. She walked into the hospital on her own upon being diagnosed... vowing that she was not going to give up smoking. Six days later she was gone. Smoking was her death warrant.

So yes. I'm a bit fanatical on this subject.

 

[tonyb]

Some people might think of Colorado as the Amsterdam of the West since you can legally buy recreational pot, but employers there can and do screen for drug use. The managing partner where I used to work said plainly that he didn't want drug users working there.

Is this managing partner averse to employing drinkers?

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's possible to drink without getting intoxicated. I'm not sure if there's any point in taking drugs unless it's to get intoxicated.

My own experience with drug users has not been good. One kid consistently showed up high and almost set fire to the place when he let the popper run without putting oil in it. Another got caught stealing from the safe to fund her drug habit. I got rid of both of them and have been very wary of hiring anybody who shows signs of being a drug user ever since.

I also nearly lost someone who means a great deal to me as a result of drug use. She spent four months in a mental hospital as a result of cannabis-induced psychosis, and she wasn't even a habitual user. She was conned into trying it because the drug culture told her it was harmless. I don't want that culture in my workplace, and I don't give a pail of stale spit if that offends anyone. My feelings about that culture are way, way beyond being offended by it. I despise it with every fiber of my being.

 

[Paisley]

Is this managing partner averse to employing drinkers?

No, as long as their drinking doesn't affect their work or their reputation. It leads to the question, what's the difference between drinking a little alcohol and smoking a little pot as long as it's legal? The difference is cultural, not chemical. The company is a CPA firm, not a lawn service. They perform audits, tax services for high net worth clients, business valuations, and other services clients typically want performed by straight-laced, reputable people. This leads to the question, would you hire a CPA, or want your child taught by a teacher, or go to a doctor who couldn't pass a drug screen?

 

[Paisley]

In Colorado, especially the Denver-Boulder area, the permissive attitude towards pot is driven by libertarian and fiscal ideals. There is a major culture of health and fitness there that's far bigger than the drug culture. A typical Denverite doesn't want harmless potheads put in jail because he doesn't want to pay for it and doesn't think it's the role of government, anyway. It doesn't mean he wants to give potheads a job, rent them a room or to date his daughter.

 

[tonyb]

Virtually any amount of alcohol has a drug effect. That's why people like to drink.

I recall the "there's no such thing as a social pot smoker" argument coming from teachers and other adults in positions of authority back in my school days. Alcohol is great for "socializing," Up to a point, anyway. It loosens the tongue. That's a drug effect.

Nicotine is a drug as well, and, its undeniable health hazards aside, some of its effects are pleasant ones.

Lost in many (most) discussions of drug use is an honest examination of why people are drawn to it. Not all of those reasons are bad ones.

We can swap anecdotes, but we'd all do well to recognize that our personal experiences are only that, and in offering them we may well disclose more about ourselves than the subject at hand. Me, I've known many a drug user, legal and otherwise, light and heavy and all weights in between. I count many among the finest people I've ever had the pleasure to know.

 

[HudsonHawk]

No, as long as their drinking doesn't affect their work or their reputation. It leads to the question, what's the difference between drinking a little alcohol and smoking a little pot as long as it's legal? The difference is cultural, not chemical. The company is a CPA firm, not a lawn service. They perform audits, tax services for high net worth clients, business valuations, and other services clients typically want performed by straight-laced, reputable people. This leads to the question, would you hire a CPA, or want your child taught by a teacher, or go to a doctor who couldn't pass a drug screen?

Here at Big Oil, when you're offered a job, it's contingent on passing a drug screen and a physical. The drug screen comes first, and only after you pass that do you get to come back and get a physical. I asked an HR person one time why they didn't do it at the same time, and she said because physicals are expensive, and 40% of the people offered jobs can't pass a drug screen. I found that hard to believe, but she swore it was true.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The main effect I get from alcohol is indigestion. On the rare occasions when I've had a glass of beer, I always have to follow it with an Alka-Seltzer chaser. I can't imagine ever drinking enough of the stuff to get lit. And wine's even worse.

As far as pot goes, the repellent stench of it is enough to keep me far, far away. We had a performer on our stage who had indulged in it at some point before the show, and settling up afterward the reek was so bad it was all I could do not to throw up. (The show wasn't all that hot either.)

 

[Paisley]

I'm sure some people use drugs to self-medicate serious conditions. And many things, including foods, sleep and exercise, have a drug-like effect. However, I don't think it's an employer's responsibility to examine why people are drawn to certain drugs. Nor do I think that whether someone is a fine person covers all the bases that an employer needs to consider.

Ideally, what people do on their own time should be their own business. On the other hand, what people in certain positions do on their own time can affect their employer, who probably shouldn't have to employ someone regardless of those effects. I'm sure nobody is saying that an employee in any job should be able to show up intoxicated at work.

I've never used drugs for a few different reasons; mostly, I live in my head and I like it to be a clear, well functioning place. I don't even eat sugar in large amounts because it makes me so sleepy. So most of the drug users I've known have been family members. None of them can hold a job. Three of them stole from my mother. One is on the run from the police. His brother lives with their mother and doesn't support his child. My oldest sister was a meth addict for a year or two, and in that time, aged 20 years. For the rest of her life--about thirty more years--she saw bugs nobody else saw and felt spiders crawling on her skin. My junkie classmates back in junior high and high school acted like idiots--which brings me to something I've noticed: drugs users tend to mentally stall at whatever age they started using.

As for my non-using, not-alcoholic family members, most of them have their act together.

 

[tonyb]

Indulgers in illegal drugs tend to keep it on the down low, for reasons too obvious to enumerate.

Remember how many people "didn't know a homosexual" back in the pre-Stonewall days?

My suspicion is that most of us know people who do all sorts of things they keep from us. Drugs. Sexual proclivities. Et cetera. And you wouldn't know any of it unless they told you. Or you drug tested them. (Or eavesdropped on their online activity. It comes as no real surprise that visitors to gay/trans porn sites are found in large proportions in the Bible Belt. And Utah.)

 

[Paisley]

Here at Big Oil, when you're offered a job, it's contingent on passing a drug screen...

There's your reason why people are turning down your six-figure job offers.

 

[2jakes]

The main effect I get from alcohol is indigestion. On the rare occasions when I've had a glass of beer, I always have to follow it with an Alka-Seltzer chaser. I can't imagine ever drinking enough of the stuff to get lit. And wine's even worse.

As far as pot goes, the repellent stench of it is enough to keep me far, far away. We had a performer on our stage who had indulged in it at some point before the show, and settling up afterward the reek was so bad it was all I could do not to throw up. (The show wasn't all that hot either.)

I enjoy Italian dishes & have tried a glass of wine .
But it’s a waste.
After a sip or two, everything seems funny and
the alcohol hurts my stomach.

Pot stinks.
Even if it didn’t.
I don’t relate to smoke as
something that makes me feel good .

 

[Paisley]

@tonyb, do drugs have drug-like effects, or don't they?

 

[tonyb]

@tonyb, do drugs have drug-like effects, or don't they?

Of course they do. That's why they're so popular.

I push back against cannabis users being characterized as "pot heads" and the impugning of the characters of what I know to be some truly fine characters. It's equivalent to drinkers being painted universally as "sots" who drink up the rent money and beat the wives and the little ones. In either case we could find real world examples. And we could find crooked cops and sexually abusive clergymen, too, if we went looking.

I'm a pretty darned clean-living sort myself. I don't drink, nor smoke, nor philander. I'm fairly careful about my diet. I wasn't always such a good boy, and while I don't miss my old ways (well, not often, anyway), my only real regret is my history of cigarette smoking. I don't wish any congratulations for how I live now, and I don't suggest anyone else should follow my example.

 

[Paisley]

tonyb, your argument seems to be that people who use drugs aren't necessarily bad people; they can even be fine people. I agree with this up to a point. Drugs do have, as you say, drug-like effects, and those effects alter users' moods, judgment, energy level, thinking, and motor skills. These effects, which people do notice, make people do things they'd never do sober. More often, IME, users tend to neglect what they should do, like LizzieMaine's employee forgetting to put oil in the popcorn maker or my nephew neglecting his child. And yes, the last one is all about my nephew's drug and alcohol use--he's not handicapped or mentally deficient or uneducated. He lives (with his mother) in an area with 3% unemployment. He isn't mean, but his personality is completely different from when he was a kid--there was a spark there and a light in his eyes that have been replaced by a what-me-worry? attitude. My sister, when she was using meth, disappeared for a year. Sober people let their parents know they're alive.

My point is, the things that stoner friends have to deal with are very different from what employers and family members go through with a drug user. A casual friend leaving town without notice, or forgetting to put oil in their own machine, or working here and there at odd jobs isn't a problem. They'll probably remain a fine person to their friends, who aren't likely to know the whole story regarding the person's family or employer. But when it's your child that goes missing, or your machine that nearly catches fire, or your child support check that doesn't arrive, and you're not on anything to dull your distress, you have skin in the game that a user's friends don't. That strikes me as a big source of the difference of perspectives here.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I live in an area where drug use is absolutely rampant -- right now opioids are the substance of choice, with meth a close second -- I had a meth lab two doors up the street from me, and I had a next door neighbor carried out of his house feet first. A couple years back we had the bath salts epidemic, during which I saw two young men beat a small animal to death in the middle of Main Street one night while they were flying on that crap, and heroin and pot have always been big deals here. You see ads in the paper for "Sternman wanted -- DRUG FREE BOAT." Being frigged up on a lobster boat can get you killed, and it's gotten to the point where boat operators can't find enough helpers who aren't on something.

And the denial that there's something wrong is huge, not just on the part of users, but on the part of society. Part of is not wanting to scare the tourists away by telling them what really goes on behind the pretty picture-postcard Wyeth painting facade, and part of it is the normalization of drug use in general. Got a problem, feeling discouraged, your sciatica acting up, can't get your sex drive going? Watch the pharmaceutical ads on TV! Dr. Feelgood's got just what you need! Can't find a job, can't pay your student loans, your parents/girlfriend/boyfriend busting your chops? 420 Blaze It, baby! Every problem solved, every crisis soothed, every pain eliminated with a magic pill, some magic leaves, some magic dust. Aldous Huxley had nothing on this society.

There's certainly a place for legitimate medication where it's legitimately needed. I take prescription meds myself to keep my triglycerides down, and when the migraines come, I take an Excedrin. But the idea that everything, everywhere, all the time has a chemical answer gives you a society that can't face its real problems. It's like painting over the rust on your car and thinking you've fixed it up fine.

We have a legalize-pot referendum coming up this fall, and it's on the ballot, not as a result of a down-home "grassroots" effort, but as a result of a slick, well-funded promotional campaign headed up by a slick, well-paid professional lobbyist -- one of the Boys himself, in person. Where'd all that money come from? Who might have an interest in getting in on the ground floor of what promises to be a very lucrative market? Will customers soon have one more reason to "call for Phillip Morris?"