I thought to myself, “Pain? Isn’t that one of the arguments of allowing medical marijuana? That it helps deal with chronic pain?”

Sure enough, I did an online check and discovered that marijuana is a possible medical treatment for scoliosis pain.

Now this is interesting because San Bernardino is one of only two counties in the state that has resisted following California law and allowing prescriptions of medical marijuana within our county, arguing a conflict between the state law and federal drug laws. They keep losing their suits, but they keep trying.

So the county’s own resistance to medical marijuana use helped drive Postmus into the arms of meth. I wonder if anybody notes the irony.

Although to be fair to the county, a man operating a medical marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay that is perfectly legal under our state law was just convicted in a federal trial and could face years in prison. But now that I think about it, I find it highly unlikely the county is concerned that individual practitioners would face federal sanctions. They’re probably more concerned about federal subsidies county agencies and organizations receive to help fight this stupid drug war.

Oh, and by the way, here’s a great Huffington Post piece about the drug war. Postmus might feel better to note that the current Democratic presidential candidate and the wife of the Republican candidate have used drugs in the past. And of course, both our current Republican president and previous Democratic president are widely believed to have also done drugs in their youth.

Plus, it’s educational! A little bit.

The biggest problem with such a plan (assuming we had staff members who could take the time to go around checking gas prices, which we don’t) is that the information would be collected one afternoon and then published the next morning. By this point the information is obsolete and would likely be incorrect. It simply wouldn’t actually be as useful as some people think it would be.

The solution to this problem is the easily updateable Internet, but even there we found a problem. A couple of weeks ago we a briefly added a widget from gasbuddy.com that allows people to search gas prices by Zip code. But the problem turned out to be that only a very small number of local gas stations participated — four or five if I recall. We did not get a good enough cross-section of gas prices for the tool to be useful or reliable. Ultimately, we took it off our site.

However, Gas Buddy also allows users to essentially join the site and contribute by reporting gas prices. If Barstow residents were willing to do so, we could develop a more reliable price check system so folks can better choose where to fill up the gas.

I had my own experiences with this program last month. While I was driving down to Ontario to catch a flight, I was pulled over by a CHP officer for apparently no reason other than to see if I was wearing a seat belt. I was. Fortunately I always make sure to give plenty of padding time to get to the airport, given the potential bottleneck of the Cajon Pass, and it was just a slight nuisance.

Then, toward the end of May, I returned back from another trip on a Friday and of course got caught up in crawling traffic on Interstate 15 heading toward Cajon Pass. I wondered if this was just typical holiday traffic (Memorial Day weekend) or if there was an accident or problem up ahead. My car slowly crept along the highway, approaching one of those big signs they put in place to warn about traffic conditions or Amber Alerts. Maybe it would tell me what was going on?

Nope. Instead, it read: “Click it or Ticket.” That’s it. The sign’s intended use was subverted as well for some wasteful campaign.

Keep an eye on them to see when we break that next threshold. I’ve asked reporter Abby Sewell to try to put together a story this week about the possibility of breaking $5 a gallon here in Barstow.

So while everybody is ranting now about $4-per-gallon gas prices, I’m noticing that premium gas in Barstow is now well into $4.80 per gallon. Will we hit $5 soon?

Whether this bodes good or ill for local Assembly candidate Bob Smith I have no idea. His chances depended on getting his name out in the other parts of the district anyway — Barstow is just a tiny part.

I’d say it definitely bodes poorly for Prop 98. I can only hope Prop 99 is defeated as well and somebody crafts a more robust eminent domain protection bill that doesn’t have any other elements that can be used to campaign against it.

Given that the entire campaign against the proposition is based on the rent control provision, I do have to wonder if it was a mistake to include it. We ran a guest commentary from Timothy Sandefur explaining in detail why the rent control issue isn’t a big deal, but sadly in some situations it is tough to fight emotional arguments with rationality.

Somebody needs to just suck it up and write a ballot initiative that restricts eminent domain and does nothing else, period. There’s too much mission creep going on. I understand the arguments for getting rid of rent control and keeping local government from abusing the zoning process to get what they want, and I agree, but this is a battle fought in increments. Let’s re-establish the proper use of eminent domain first and then wage the other battles.

I’m also disappointed in the number of newspapers who have fallen for the horrible arguments that have been presented to kill 98 and approve 99. You’d think an industry that requires government respect for the Bill of Rights in order to function would have a little more appreciation for property rights. But, sadly, for many newspaper editorial writers, the strength of your rights seems to weaken based on the amount of money you have. If you own a mobile home, you have all sorts of rights. If you own a mobile home park, well then, forget it.

I scanned my card and had to wait an unusual amount of time for it to let me start pumping. I pushed the button again, just to make sure I hadn’t forgotten, but it was still about 30 seconds before I actually was able to pump fuel.

As I was waiting, I noticed something odd — the price digitally listed on the pump for gas was $2.89 per gallon, not $3.89. I figured perhaps this was a visual glitch. But once it let me begin pumping, I watched the numbers fly by and discovered, indeed, it was charging me only $2.89 per gallon.

I wondered briefly what to do. Part of me wanted to let the staff there know, because I’m well aware that the profits from high gas costs aren’t going to individual stations. I didn’t want them to get in trouble or fired for “undercharging” for gas. But then once I was finished and replaced the nozzle, the display went through an odd reset process, and the price switched back to the correct $3.89 per gallon.

By the way, Barstow is of course known for higher gas prices due to our location in the desert. Traffic between Los Angeles and Las Vegas increases demand for gas to get through the Mojave, and that drives up prices. Typically gas is cheaper almost everywhere in the state (except Baker).

However, when I drove down to Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, I discovered gas prices were pretty much the same as they were out here. My previous experiences had gas prices at about 10 to 15 cents cheaper per gallon in LA. So even though our gas prices are extremely high, they’re not necessarily that much higher than gas elsewhere in the state the way it used to be.

I was invited to participate in one of United Way’s allocation subcommittees, which visits the agencies to see what they do and serves as a form of oversight to make sure United Way donors’ money doesn’t go to waste.

One of the agencies I visited was New Hope Village, a transitional housing complex for homeless adults and families that works to make them self-sufficient members of our community. I met a couple of the complex’s residents, recovering addicts who are working to put their lives back together. According to Executive Director Angela Pasco, many of them have destroyed their credit ratings, making it difficult for them to overcome their problems even after fighting back their addictions.

New Hope Village struggles as well, trying to secure enough funding to keep their modest efforts going. Pasco said they’d like to expand to offer more apartments for needy families. They rely a lot on donations to furnish the apartments they offer. They do a lot with a little.

A couple of weeks ago a wrote an editorial chiding State Sen. George Runner and Assemblywoman Sharon Runner for trying to compound the failures of the drug war by increasing penalties for meth use and sales. Their “Safe Neighborhoods Act” is a costly waste of time that attempts to garner support for their own ambitions by appealing to people’s fears.

And so you may ask, “Well then, what’s the alternative?” Places like New Hope Village are the alternative. Residents get assistance with meeting basic needs, training and help with their problems so that they learn to overcome them, and most importantly, they’re also held accountable for their actions. They are neither discarded, nor coddled. They are treated like adults, not wards of the state — but also not like helpless children.

We need more places like New Hope Village, not more prison cells.