"Jim Fisher" wrote in message
news:to2wd.2559

Never smoked the stuff, have ya? Good for you, man. If you *did* smoke
it,
you'd know that pot (and lots of other stuff) affects you during and well
after partaking of it. Tell your name to just about any long-term pot
smoker. Even if 's not stoned, he won't remember it next time he meets
you.

I disagree. I know laywers, professors, engineers, programmers and, well,
parents who have smoked pot most of their adult life who don't demonstrate
those characteristics.

One, as I think I mentioned earlier, was UAL/PDX' employee of the year three
or four times in his 23-year career. He got a special award for not missing
a day of work in five years. I know for a fact he's smoked pot daily since
before I was born. Hasn't been in a traffic accident in as long as I can
remember (drove as a courier after UAL closed down his unit and laid the
entire crew off), never been arrested.

Having said that, I am absolutely not condoning mixing drug use of any kind
with flying. I've done my share of, eh, sampling, but I won't even eat
curry before flying because it makes me drowsy, and coffee is a diuretic
which is a distraction so I limit that as well.

I guess what torques me off is, the vast majority of commercial pilots make
squat, and yet every time they take off they put their lives and their
passengers' lives in danger. Every single time. They're not paid in
accordance with the risk of their OWN lives, and yet it takes some well-paid
group of bureaucrats somewhere to legislate safety to people who risk their
lives every damned minute they're working. My thinking, of course, may be
way off.

Not to mention the fact that a commercial pilot who performs an illegal
act on a
habitual basis has no place in the cockpit, man!

LOL! My grandparents broke down in southeast Oregon on a hunting trip and
chartered a pilot to take them to Reno for the car part. In Reno, the
pilot rented a car and drove them to the part place. My grandfather (a
cop) said the guy was as good a pilot as those he rode with in WWII, but
that he ran four stop signs in the short amount of time they were with him.
:

-c