It shocked no one I’m sure to find that the teen who was mauled to death by a tiger at the San Francisco Zoo was high. It’s horrible that this young man’s life was cut short due in large part to a culture of acceptance of drug use. This kid got high, and he either teased the tiger or climbed the retaining fence or did something silly and paid the ultimate price.
But pot isn’t to blame at all, right?
SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Medical Examiner says a teenager who was killed by an escaped zoo tiger six months ago had marijuana and alcohol in his system.
The toxicology report was released Monday. It is included with an autopsy that concluded 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. was killed by “blunt force injuries of the head and neck.”
Sousa’s two friends also were seriously injured when a 250-pound Siberian tiger escaped its enclosure at San Francisco Zoo on Christmas Day.
Michael Cardoza, a lawyer for the Sousa family, says it’s irrelevant whether the teen was drinking or smoking pot before he was mauled. The family is suing the city.
The wall surrounding the tiger’s enclosure was found to be 4 feet lower than recommended
Yeah. Irrelevant. Thousands of other people walked by the enclosure and weren’t mauled, but the fact that three kids who were high managed to get themselves mauled has nothing to do with drug use.
The parents should be suing the scum who sold the pot to those kids in the first place.
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I’ve been reading through this website for a while, grimacing slightly every time you blame some heinous act on drug use that is at very worst tangentially related to the the crime itself.
I never felt I needed to say anything before, however this article crosses the line. A fucking tiger gets out of its enclosure and kills a teenager, and you blame drugs in their system? If the teen climbed the fence, then sure, it’s his fault. But he didn’t, asshole. Marijuana is not the culprit here, the combination of tiger and badly designed tiger cage is.
You not only blame anything that anyone without clean urine does, but also that which is done to them, on the failed drug test, . You assume they’re always high at the moment of incidence, and when anyone points out your unsupported supposition you defend yourself with the ridiculous notion that most drug users are in a state of perma-stone, where they are constantly intoxicated regardless of recent drug use.
This is trivializing a tragedy, and using it to push your agenda. If a car barreled through a red light, killed a kid and the autopsy showed residual THC in his system, I’m sure you’d blame the weed. I hope a tiger mauls you.
You don’t know what “tangentially” means do you. I pick stories where the drug use either directly precedes stupidity or where chronic users show signs of mental instability. In this case literally thousands of people walked by the enclose and the tiger didn’t care. Put the bong down and do the math genius. High teens. Zoo. Shoddy enclosure. What do you think happened? Why did the tiger pick the person who was blitz out of his mind to maul and not a small child? Is it because he, like teens everywhere, got high and started raising hell in the zoo? Or was it just his fate to be mauled high in the zoo?
I won’t be mauled by a tiger sorry. I don’t get high and tease them.
i wonder what you think tangential means? probably a line overlapping a curve at a only single point. that’s the mathematical definition.
what about the literary definition?
# S: (adj) digressive, tangential (of superficial relevance if any) “a digressive allusion to the day of the week”; “a tangential remark”
so let me clarify, many of your cases against drugs have only superficial relevance (though I doubt there’s any), i.e. something happened involving people, the people failed drug tests, you blame the drugs. thus superficial, meaning shallow, and without substance.
so, since you seem more mathematically inclined than, say, sensible, let me remind you that correlation does not imply causation.
in this case you dont know that drug use preceded stupidity; you know nothing about his drug use, and any act of stupidity that you imagine he has committed was concocted by your imagination because of your bias towards drug users. who said he was blitzed out of his mind? I think a coroner said that he showed up positive for thc, meaning he had smoked some weed in the last couple of weeks.
If for example he had dropped his bong in the tiger enclosure and mounted a daring rescue into the pit, only to be cut down by the tiger, i would certainly label that as drug use preceding stupidity.
The thing to remember is that the tiger was out of its space. I suppose the marijuana enabled the tiger to escape? we dont know whether or not he was antagonizing the tiger, but even if he was, who cares? The siberian tiger is the strongest cat in the world. I didn’t realize that zoos were built to be able to just barely hold back wild animals when they are docile and contented, but have walls low enough that an enraged tiger who really puts her mind to it can escape with a leap and a bound.
This tiger had previously mauled a zookeeper through its cage while being fed. Was it his fate to be mauled? no more than it was the fate of every pedestrian who is killed by a drunk driver, or every family that dies in their sleep because their defective stove leaked and they suffocated on natural gas, it was not fate but terrible luck, a tragic mishap that could possibly be blamed on someone else’s negligence.
I wonder why the high teens were the ones who were mauled? I would venture that they were the people nearest the newly emancipated tigress.
Again all the incidents I blog about are caused by drug use. The tiger mauled the kids because stoned kids tease animals, let’s not bullshit I was a kid in NY in the 80s. I’ve partied harder than you, I’ve watched people smoke more pot/hash/coke or whatever than you can imagine. It’s funny people like you always think they’re the first people to discover getting high and the rest of us are just so “square” that we don’t know what it’s like to be high or drunk.
You’re really arguing that getting high doesn’t change your behavior? You’re really claiming that people don’t do things while high they wouldn’t do sober? That’s just asinine. You wouldn’t get high if it didn’t completely change your perceptions. You wouldn’t want others to get high unless it completely changed their behavior. That’s why people get girls high, so they’ll get laid.
By your logic hookers would suck off guys in allies even if they weren’t addicts. Chicks who put “420 for sex” ads on the web would just nail any dude anyway. You use drugs with a bunch of people who you can’t stand to be around sober, and they can’t stand to be around you sober. That’s the truth. The chicks you’ve had were all high weren’t they? The friendships you have are all based around getting high right? You still get money from your parents? You either go to college where you do all right and get a lot of mercy grades form teachers or you work somewhere where you get by on being liked not on your performance? Save the lectures kid I know you. I’ve seen thousands of people just like you and had this conversation before.
Here’s the real question. I have not here or anywhere put forward a theory about legalization. I have said that there’s no such thing as harmless drug use. Why does that bother you so much that you spend two or three days arguing with a stranger online? Is it because it hits a little close to home?
another variant of tangential (tangentiality actually): a mental condition in which one tends to digress from the topic under discussion. just pointing this out since you dont address the topic at hand, but go into your copy paste anti drug spiel.
you dont address my argument at all. your whole post is a straw man. you fail to point out why teasing a tiger would allow it to escape. a tiger at a zoo is not a guest at a hotel, it is a prisoner. If the prisoner escapes it is the fault of the guards or the prison designer.
I dont think I’m the first person to discover getting high, anyone with a brain knows drug use predates the written word. I certainly dont think you’ve never been high, you argue like your nodding out.
obviously being high changes your behavior, because it changes your thought patterns. of course some people get girls high for the sole purpose of getting laid, and this is pretty gray moral ground. taking advantage of an intoxicated individual, forcing your self onto someone in a compromised mental state is clearly despicable as is calculatedly getting someone higher and higher until you’re sure they wont resist your advances.
addicts are to be pitied and the actions they take to get money to appease their cravings are often terrible. hookers sucking dick for crack or meth or heroin or what have you are slaves to their altered brain chemistry and often to their pimp as well. They should be helped, not condemned.
you dont know anything about me. none of my friendships are based on getting high. getting high with people you cant stand sober is a waste of good drugs, because 9 times out of 10 you cant stand them high either. do you really think that druggies all get by on teachers mercy and general likeability? they sink or swim the same as everyone else. I get by on my intelligence and my work.
I haven’t mentioned legalization either. In fact I hadn’t mentioned anything pertaining to the topics in your response. If you do respond to this, please make sure to address the real issue as well, why you think its not the fault of the inadequate containment at the zoo or even the fucking tiger, but the fault of the dead victim, whom you know nothing about.
And it bothers me because it does hit close to home. I could be the unfortunate soul who gets killed by a tiger just for having the horrible luck of being near it when it escaped. and i would fail a post mortem drug test. and you would lampoon me on the internet, and blame me for my death based on nothing.
it bothers me how hateful your opinions are. whats worse is that your hate is often backed up with your unsubstantiated arguments. I have no problem with your articles condemning a junkie who doesnt watch her kid and the kid ends up dying. fair opinions and good arguments are respectable. filling the internet with more hate is beyond contempt.
again, the tragic death involving the tiger is the real issue here, so dont just go on another anti drug tirade talking about all the evils in the world that happen proximate to drugs.