A Few More Things to Get Done This Winter and Some Thoughts on Chris Perez

Things to get done before the off-season is over.

1. Sign Clayton Kershaw to a lifetime contract at over $300 million.
2. Extend Hanley Ramirez for four years.  It’ll probably cost upwards of $90 million.
3. Sign Mashiro Tanaka to a four year $100 million deal.

No sweat right?  It’s just money.

Dustin Nosler at Feelin Kinda Blue (LINKED HERE) talks about where he thinks Tanaka might end up in detail.  It’s a very interesting read.

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I’ve worked in law enforcement for 25 years now.  Much of my life dedicated to apprehending drug smugglers.  I’ve seen a lot, especially in my early years on the job when I worked the trenches at the southern border. So with that said, I have little sympathy for users of drugs that I have spent a good portion of my life fighting against.  I understand the “war on drugs” has been a controversial battle and a difficult losing one at that.  I understand that the politics of it all is frustrating.  I get it.

There are those that take a libertarian viewpoint and believe the stuff should simply be legalized.  I get that too, but I don’t make the laws.  I simply do my job and enforce them.  In my career I’ve seen violence at the scale of life and death as smugglers have attempted to kill in an effort to get their stuff across the border.  Officers run over, shot at and stabbed.  The violence in the drug trade is quite real and you have to be on your guard constantly.

  

In September Chris Perez pleaded "no contest" to marijuana possession after shipping the drug in his dog's name to his Cleveland home. (AP photo)

To all those Dodger fans that blow off Chris Perez’s problems with the law, (marijuana possession conviction), as being much ado about nothing because it was simply just “marijuana.”  I have a piece to say as it angers me to no end. I’ve seen guys hurt real bad trying to keep that stuff off the street.  And yes, we’re talking about cannabis.

The THC content of marijuana that is harvested today runs between 22-27%.  Sometimes even higher.  That stuff people were smoking in the 70s and 80s had as low as 10% of that potency,  (between 2 and 6%).  The marijuana harvested today is done so in an effort to maximize the “high” for the consumer.  I don’t think the casual marijuana smoker from the 70s has a true understanding of the potency of the stuff that kids are smoking today using bogus medicinal marijuana cards.

Throw into the mix all the carcinogens and tumor promoters in today’s marijuana.  The stuff is a health risk.  No it’s not of a severity of schedule I drugs such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, but it still can be abused and it causes mind altering affects that can seriously impair judgement.  Cannabis smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including more than 50 that are known to cause cancer and long term marijuana smoking has been linked to respiratory problems as well.  You want the pain relieving and healing properties of cannabis?  How about taking it in pill form?  Ingesting smoke into the lungs is crazy to enhance your health in my opinion.

In today’s world where medicinal marijuana and its positive effects are constantly promoted, very few are discussing the negatives of the drug and long term effects of its use.  Chris Perez is a user and people blow it off as something that shouldn’t be a concern.  (In fact, one Dodger message board sang praises about the guy, as if he’s a role model because of his past).  I think he’s a victim of a misinformation campaign that many cannabis users subscribe to.  Truth of the matter is, marijuana is a drug.  It’s much more potent than it used to be and it’s abuse can have serious negative health effects.

I hope that Perez and his wife have been educated on all of this and recognize the error of their ways.  For some reason though, I kind of doubt that has happened.  That’s all I really have to say on the subject.  I’ll probably be scorched by marijuana use promoters.  I really don’t care what they have to say though.

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I just read that former Orioles center fielder Paul Blair passed away today at age 69.  It is reported that he collapsed at a bowling alley in Pikesville, Maryland.  Blair's home run in game three of the '66 World Series off of Claude Osteen accounted for the only run in a 1-0 O's win over the Dodgers. He was one of the greatest defensive outfielders to ever play the game, winning 8 gold gloves in his career that spanned from 1964-80.  Paul was a Los Angeles native, having graduated from Manual Arts High School.