I’ve never tried pot.
It’s not that I have any moral objections to Marijuana , and I really don’t care whether it’s legal or illegal – it’s not a big issue to me.
The reason I have never smoked Marijuana is the same reason why I don’t smoke cigarettes: I just can’t understand why anyone would willingly inhale the soot and tar and ash of burning carcinogens into their lungs. Blech. You might as well suck on the exhaust pipe of your local city bus for all the good it’s going to do for you!
Back around 1985 or so, I was staying at a friends house for a few days and he asked if I wanted to smoke a joint with him. I politely declined, but he was persistent. After he finished the first joint by himself, he rolled me a fresh one and offered it again. When I convinced him I really didn’t want it, he put it in a plastic baggie and told me to bring it home and keep it – just in case I was ever in the mood to give it a go.
I put it in my suitcase without really thinking much about it, and when I was packing up to go home I threw it into my toiletry kit alongside my razor, toothbrush, deodorant, and travel size bottle of shampoo.
The joint ended up staying in my toiletry bag for the next ten years.
During those years I was a global exhibits manager (travelling to over 20 trade shows a year, half of them international), a product manager (visiting customers and training our sales team worldwide), and an Asia regional manager (primarily supporting our sales offices in Tokyo and Hong Kong, but still attending trade shows and attending marketing meetings at our corporate headquarters in the UK).
My joint was with me on many trips to South America, Europe, and Asia; we became very well acquainted. According to my United Airlines statements, I accrued over 700,000 actual flight miles during those years.
It was during one of my many trips to Singapore that I realized that I had been smuggling pot into some very strict countries. Singapore is well known for their zero tolerance and harsh punishments for drug smugglers.
In total, I think I took my joint through immigration at the Tokyo airport at least fifteen times, maybe more. Paul McCartney was arrested in 1980 when they found just a tiny bit of pot in his suitcase at the Tokyo airport, and he ended up having to cancel all of his concerts in Japan while he was in custody. Because of his celebrity status, he was deported without conviction. I’m not sure I would have gotten off quite so easily.
Sometime in the late 90’s I finally got a new shaving kit. A nice leather one this time, which replaced the ratty brown cloth toiletry bag that I think I inherited from my step-dad as a teenager. As I went through all the items in the old bag, deciding what to keep and what to throw away, the joint didn’t make the final cut and ended up in the trash. I don’t know how long these things last, but I suspect it was well past it’s prime at that point.
As I’m currently updating my resume, trying to spice it up a little bit and make it sound more exciting, I’m wondering – should I list “international drug smuggler” as one of my achievements?