by WES FERGUSON
Call it the banishment bandwagon. A prohibition spree. An orgy of outlawing.
This spring, the Kyle City Council has passed a string of ordinances that protect our fair city from an onslaught of legal hallucinogens, stimulants, and other mind-altering stuff.
The latest legal substance to run afoul of the City Council is something called “bath salts.” When voting to outlaw bath salts earlier this month, the council noted that while they are not forbidden by state or federal law, they are said to be right up there with amphetamines or cocaine. In other words, a “danger to the public health and safety that must be immediately addressed.”
The City Council approved the bath salts ordinance during a second reading on April 19. Earlier this year, the council members outlawed synthetic marijuana and forbade anyone younger than 21 from using salvia divinorum, a hallucinogenic plant that grows in Mexico.
Despite the council’s best efforts, though, there remain a number of ways to alter one’s consciousness in Kyle – replete with a range of negative consequences. It made us wonder: What should the City Council ban next?
Here are four suggestions:
1. BARBECUE
Picture this scenario: A soccer ball skitters into the street. A child darts for the ball – and into the path of your oncoming Taurus. Are you on the alert? Do you swerve to avoid the tragedy?
Normally you do, but today you don’t. Today, your eyes are glazed over. Spittle is dribbling down your chin. And you, my friend, are lost in the brisket-induced stupor most commonly known as barbecue coma. Only minutes before, you were shoveling down a half pound of seasoned meats at one of Kyle’s local smokehouses. Now, in your addled state – reflexes dulled, faculties diminished – you thought it would be cool to get behind a wheel and drive. Tsk, tsk.
If Kyle residents can’t be trusted to eat barbecue responsibly – to know when to say when to sausage – then barbecue must be banned. If nothing else, it will provide another tool for law enforcement so “we can start having a clean town,” as one council member recently put it.
Envision another scenario played out on Center Street, or perhaps an access road beside Interstate 35.
“Sir, have you been eating ribs tonight?”
“No, officer. Well, maybe one. Two, tops.”
“It smells like you’ve had a few. Would you mind stepping out of the vehicle, please?”
There are arguments against a brisket ban. Some naysayers and libertarians might claim that if barbecue is outlawed, only outlaws will have barbecue. To them, we retort: Think of the children. The innocent children.
2. JOGGING
It once was thought to be an urban legend: That, for some people, the act of jogging was just a front for a much more insidious agenda.
In narco-slang, they called it the “runner’s high.”
But this was no myth. In 2008, a team of researchers in Germany discovered that running released a flood of endorphins in the runner’s body. Some runners were abusing this chemical to alter their moods and produce transitory feelings of “well-being.”
Endorphins are a type of opioids. The word opioid sounds a lot like opium. Opium is a highly illegal and dangerous drug.
In recent years, our hike-and-bike trails have become a series of conduits for increasingly illegitimate activity. It is exceedingly difficult, however, to distinguish between the illicit jogger and his licit counterpart.
Therefore, all jogging must be outlawed.
3. ALCOHOL
When Kyle City Council members were banning various forms of synthetic marijuana – with names like K-2, Spice Diamond and Yucatan Fire – they cited among the following justifications:
“The use of these products is a danger to the public health, safety, and welfare because the adverse side effects ... include panic attacks, vomiting, tachycardia (an abnormally rapid heart rate), elevated blood pressure, pallor, numbness and tingling, and in some cases, tremors and seizures.”
Those don’t sound like pleasant side effects, but we’ve heard worse at the end of Cialis commercials.
Maybe it’s true that Kyle residents need protection from our own poor decisions. We apparently will ingest anything as long as it’s legal. By that same token, then, shouldn’t we require more protection from beer, wine and hard liquor? After all, drinking alcohol really does come with a risk or two. Like waking up in San Marcos.
Ban alcohol.
4. NUTMEG
“Lock up your children! Incinerate the contents of your spice rack! A new drug menace is sweeping the land, and its name is nutmeg!”
So warns an article appearing last December in the online magazine Slate. Nutmeg, it turns out, is the diciest of all the spices.
According to ample medical research and plenty of anecdotal evidence – the website nutmeghigh.com, for instance – you can eat, snort or smoke nutmeg and wait a few hours, then proceed to trip your face off.
That’s because nutmeg contains a hallucinogen called myristicin. It comes with some nastier side effects, too. You could experience convulsions, palpitations, nausea, dehydration and body pain. At least two people have died in the past 100 years from too much nutmeg.
Despite the potential for harm, though, many cooks swear by this poison-cum-spice. They appreciate nutmeg’s aroma and sweetness, and they promise they’ve never, ever gotten high from it.
This calls for a common-sense approach from Kyle’s city leaders. The appropriate decision will come to them, so long as they put the children first – while holding steadfast to their efforts to clean up this town.
Just think of the children. The innocent children.
