Driving Dead, or Dead Man Driving sequel to

Walking Dead and Dead Man Walking, Zombies

          The Dead Man Walking story line was a convicted murderer sat on death row and was befriended by a nun. Roger Ebert, movie critic praised the movie to ‘ confront a grave and controversial issue in our society and see it fairly, from all sides, not take any shortcuts, and move the audience to a great emotional experience without unfair manipulation.’   The term supposedly comes from the guards referring to an inmate outside of the cell awaiting on death row, moving around to interviews, or such. Always love a sequel.   A clever title variation is The Walking Dead, for a TV series. A title sequel would be Driving Dead.

To maintain a clever title, perhaps a sequel would be Dead Man Driving. The plot would be that the state legislature passed laws to make cannabis, pot, marijuana, legally available to any person who can get their physician to certify the patient has less than 6 months to live. In this situation, the majority of legislators accepted the argument that since the suffering patients were going to die anyway, if Pot could cheer their suffering, then Pot should be made available to them. Dozens upon dozens of statute sections were affected and modified to clear the path for the legalization. Six months to live. What would you do? What would you say? Where would you go? Who would you call? What would you try? The argument is that marijuana has helped some people with the pain, and they should be allowed to try the grass, to see if it helps And if it kills them, they were going to pass on anyway.

Where does that leave their quality of life? Not as bad as one might suspect, For instance, there is nothing to revoke a drivers license.  Just because you have six months to live, and are high on weed, doesn’t mean you can’t sit behind a steering wheel, start an engine, and get out on the streets. So, if you take a tote, or smoke a joint, you can drive on the license you had before you were declared near dead.   The driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol still apply, but what can they do to you if you are hi and impaired, straddling the center line, in your driving? Shoot you? Not really. The breathalyzers test alcohol, but won’t react to THC. The metabolites of marijuana stay in the person’s system for six weeks or more, and can be identified by gas chromatography down to 50 parts per billion. Pretty delicate.

           So as more and more people get their prescription, as being six months to live, and qualify for state grown marijuana, they can have their cake and eat it too. As I recall, there were fudge or brownies called Alice B Toklas deserts with cocoa mixed with marijuana, back in the day.

Yes, Marijuana is still a DEA Schedule One substance, which has no currently accepted medical use or benefit whatsoever but has a potential for abuse, such as addiction i.e. the potential to create severe psychological and/or physical dependence, and dangerous. Call it the placebo effect, that if someone is getting something edgy or living on the edge, it has an adrenaline rush connected to it. Forbidden. At least it can be known. The Driving dead was a player all along.

Poster Music from Dead Man Walking Bruce Springsteen Johnny Cash Suzanne Vega Lyle Lovett Nusratt Fateh Ali Khan with Eddie Vedder Tom Waits Michelle Shocked Mary Chapin Carpenter Steve Earle Patti Smith

The original movie title suggests another twist. Not so much as having access to a car, but that the patient has six months to live. And if you are on death row, what better certification of six months to live than that – death row? The death row inmates can qualify for pot, perhaps on a disability basis. What is the disability? Depression? Chronic Pain? Clostrophonia? which accompanies sitting under the sword of Damocles.

The terminally ill have a ‘right to try’ marijuana, and still drive their cars.

The last question. What if the patient doesn’t die within the six months allowed by statute to justify using pot? Just renew the certificate. The physicians do not guarantee that someone will die with six months, only that that they have six months   or less to live. Perhaps the patients will die within the next six months. Or the following six, or the following six. No limit on certificates, and eventually, it could happen. Hey it could happen.

Anyway as you drive down the road in the future, you can look to the left, right, in front, and behind, and wonder if any of the drivers have six months to live, and if so, are any on pot?

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