Of course, you're still just as welcome as ever to lurk and/or contribute.
It's not that I don't care what you think, I do. I just disagree with your premise. I don't think that those ads appearing in this context equate to helping or supporting the industry, even in a round about way. I think it'll backfire. I think they'll either demand from the ad providers (Google, in this case) a way to filter this site out of their allowed context or they'll just have to go on paying me.
And I think the faithful opposition is pretty much shooting itself in the foot by counting themselves out of the market. Why cede the entire economy to the bad guys? Why disallow yourself your birthright, as an American, to control that portion of the economy that you can gain without force or fraud? Taking a vow of poverty makes about as much sense as the Shakers' silly notion about lifetime celibacy. What, never heard of the Shakers? Well, it wasn't such a good idea after all.
If I spent lots of time and money and made my life an open book to sue them to get that money out of them, would that be better? I don't see how. If a thousand or three of us were to put ads in all of our private websites, we could accomplish the same thing without any coercion, stress or trouble. And it's fun, too!
There's something to the argument about repetition, brand familiarity and impressions. But it's not the WHOLE thing. Why do you think the industry spends so much time, money and energy on slapp suits? If all publicity were good publicity, why would they do that? They may be crazy but they ain't dumb. They do it because they have to in order to control the message. Well, I think this boneheaded move of mine will help to throw a little healthy chaos into that. If branding in negative context is just the same as promotional advertising, then how come those ad council ads against smoking are so damned effective?
So, I'm willing to take my chances, suffer the slings and arrows, be the guinea pig and see what happens with this.
It continues to amaze me to talk to law students -- college
graduates all and smarter than the average bear -- who will
seriously tell me about how dangerous mj is and how it
destroys the lives of those who use it and who, in the
very next sentence, will tell me how they and their
friends -- now CPAs, engineers, med students -- used
pot regularly through high school and college. And
they don't see the contradiction between these statements.
We're not just talking ignorance here -- we are talking
deep down, serious, religious indoctrination.
--Buford C. Terrell, Professor of Law, South Texas College of Law
_________________
Drug war POW
Straight, Sarasota
`80 - `82
