STONEVILLE SHOULD BE SITE OF FED POT FARM

Make no mistake about it - Ole Miss is the place to be if you want to study
pharmacy. Folks who matriculate there are brainiacs and they leave Oxford
knowing the difference in Prevacid and Preparation H and then some.

Ole Miss pharmacists have taken care of me all my life - from the late Jack
Stribling in Philadelphia to Ricky Hunt now in Forest. I've reached the
stage of life in which there's one pill for high blood pressure, one for
high cholesterol, another for something called "high triglycerides"(don't
ask, it has something to do with my fondness for the pulled pork plate at
Homer's Barbeque) and two other big green pills that are roughly the
chemical equivalent of Hamburger Helper for the pancreas.

And let us not forget the insulin ("No, officer, those needle marks are not
recreational, no, sir."). I love my Ole Miss pharmacists and they love me.

But I never particularly understood the logic in locating a federal
medicinal marijuana growing compound at Ole Miss. Letting Ole Miss
pharmacists study the killer weed is a great idea, but let them grow it? Nah.

Horticulture Needed

Seems to me that if you want something grown and grown right, you take it
to an agricultural school. A land-grant institution, mind you. Dare I say
it, if Uncle Sam needs a steady stash of high quality, potent wacky
tobacco, he should have put the farm at Mississippi State - where we know a
little about farming. That's our thing.

Some folks in California are complaining publicly that the dope grown at
Ole Miss is "weak" and full of "trash." Now I'm not sure what the Ole Miss
pot growers are doing wrong, but I can promise you that if MSU plant
pathologists were on the case, the weed in question would be supremely
potent, yields would be vastly improved, more dope would be grown per acre
with less herbicides and more targeted fertilizers.

Heck, they'd be making RoundUp commercials about it.

"Weak" marijuana grown at Ole Miss? Can you imagine what the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce will do with this? What about the trial lawyers?

Twinkie Factories?

Those boys in the MSU Experiment Stations don't play. They would produce
"Bulldog Gold" and supply the medicinal marijuana user not only with some
primo weed, but with the finest structurally-enhanced bongs on the planet
as well designed by nerdy but with-it MSU mechanical engineers.

Fellow Clarion-Ledger scribes Jim Ewing and Marshall Ramsey have some ideas
on the subject. Ewing says the pot growing facility should rightly be put
under control of the MSU Cooperative Extension Service's Delta Research and
Extension Center - in Stoneville. Get it? He's still giggling.

Ramsey - a Pulitzer finalist, but a scuzzy Tennessee Vol fan nonetheless -
thinks that the production of higher grade Mississippi medicinal marijuana
might lead to economic development opportunities. How so?

"Twinkie factories, big old Twinkie factories," said Ramsey, his eyes
glazed like a Krispy Kreme doughnut. "I bet those Aggies could grow pot
plants as tall as the redwoods."

You want law degrees and the joys of wandering Rowan Oak? Go to Ole Miss.
You want to grow a bumper crop of something green? Hail, dear old State.
Horticulture is what's needed here, not culture.