Drugs, Sports

Reefer Sadness

On Wednesday, a race car driver named Smoke got off and it may be because the one he smote may have smoked

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Ours is the age of victim shaming. This much I know. Our culture is one so damned afraid of death that we rationalize every single one as the inevitable coda to a life poorly lived. The ownership society we have built has meant nothing materially so we are left with our own deaths to own… wholly and irrevocably. If you die tomorrow, the newspaper will tell us what horrible behaviors led to your death. Tsk tsks will ring out both far and wide. Assuming anyone gives a sh*t about you. Or the person who killed you.

This impulse to blame death on the decedent doesn’t need much encouragement, of course. But it finds it in the kindred compulsion to believe everything that is said about drugs. You combine a stubborn unwillingness to accept the indeterminacy of death along with the rank stupidity of drugs and… well, you got yourself a stew, baby.

On Wednesday, a race car driver named Smoke got off and it may be because the one he smote may have smoked…

Tony Stewart killed a man two months ago while driving in one of those dirt track races that are held in between hootenannies and hoedowns in certain parts of this country. Video of the incident raced across the internet faster than a top fuel dragster and most discussion focused on whether Stewart would be held liable for the man’s death. The other man’s name, by the way, is Kevin Ward Jr. He wasn’t famous before his death and most people didn’t and don’t care about him beyond his role in famous person Tony Stewart’s life and potential culpability for murder.

So about that potential culpability, this week a collection of rural jurors decided that Stewart would not be criminally charged in Ward’s death:

Nearly two months after Tony Stewart struck and killed a fellow driver, the district attorney’s office announced today that a grand jury investigation determined there was insufficient evidence to indict the NASCAR star.

The grand jury’s investigation began last week and its findings clearing Stewart were released today by the Ontario County District Attorney’s Office in Canandaigua, New York.

In a news conference, prosecutors said the grand jury considered manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges. He said several videos of the Aug. 9 incident were enhanced and analyzed and did not show any evidence of a crime.

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Which, fine. What little evidence is publicly available does nothing to prove that Stewart meant to kill Ward. Accidents do happen and the possibility that no one is truly at fault in hastening Ward’s demise is a completely satisfactory outcome, if one lacking in the kind of strong moral condemnation that gets all of America off in these deeply bored times.

A screaming drug paranoia comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.

That didn’t stop the District Attorney from glibly entering into the public record some truly high grade bullshit about the dead man’s pot use:

Toxicology reports revealed Kevin Ward Jr., was under the influence of marijuana on the night he was struck and killed by a sprint car driven by Tony Stewart, Ontario County (N.Y.) District Attorney Michael Tantillo said Wednesday.

At a news conference to announce that a grand jury had declined to indict Stewart in Ward’s death, Tantillo said the level of marijuana in Ward’s system was high enough to impair judgment.

I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why the District Attorney would reveal such information. Does Tantillo think it necessary to bolster the case for not indicting Tony Stewart? Does he believe that, but for the results of the toxicology report, Stewart would be facing a trial? Did the grand jury really consider this supposed weed evidence to make their decision?

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I believe it’s highly likely that the D.A. believes that Ward’s toxicology test is important information. And it’s not because he’s a prosecutor or because he’s a bad person. It’s because he, like so many others, believes that literally everything is possible if you sprinkle a little bit of drugs on it. You can wrestle bears on PCP and eat people’s faces on bath salts.

So Kevin Ward Jr.’s behavior and death are neatly explainable with weed. His wanton disregard for his own life was shown by his reckless smoking of drugs. He smoked drugs. He was “impaired.” He died. Q.E.D.

What say you, former White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske?

‘I’ll be dead – and so will lots of other people – from old age, before we know the impairment levels’ for marijuana and other drugs, said White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske.

Oh f**k, never mind.

NASCAR Driver Tony Stewart Cleared in Fatal Track Accident [ABC News]
DA: Kevin Ward Jr. was under the influence of marijuana [USA Today]

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