Tarheels’ top LB busted for pot

Big Four Rivals20

Notice how this didn’t happen in Chapel Hill?

Almost never does. Why a Carolina football or basketball player would ever venture outside the friendly confines of Orange County befuddles me.

Compare that to vigor and deep reach into the living premises of Wolfpack football players by off-duty police in Raleigh. (Link)

Link

Quan Sturdivant, an All-ACC linebacker for the UNC-Chapel Hill football team, has been charged with possession of marijuana.

Sturdivant, 21, of Oakboro was arrested Saturday morning by Albemarle police and charged with possession of less than half an ounce of marijuana, a misdemeanor. Sturdivant is scheduled to appear Aug. 2 in Stanly County District Court.

Last year Sturdivant was the first Tar Heel linebacker named first-team All-ACC since 1997, according to the school’s website.

Sturdivant also was one of 16 semifinalists for the Butkus Award, given to the nation’s top linebacker.

You can bet your ass that Sturdivant will be on the field when the Tarheels open the season in Atlanta against LSU. So, the good news is that we shouldn’t have to deal with any imbalance of any coverage and application of standards related to our little problem from hypocritical Taheel fans and the local media. (Yes, I know that was a very redundant statement).

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20 Responses to Tarheels’ top LB busted for pot

  1. Sam92 07/12/2010 at 10:43 AM #

    yes, it is convenient — it will have to shut up annoying tarholes giving us a hard time about our own players’ mishaps with wacky weed (not that this is really any worse than being caught with a six pack, but still, I’m glad it evens out current events for us)

  2. bluelena69 07/12/2010 at 12:25 PM #

    Man when are we ever gonna get over this stupid outdated, illogical, wasteful war on drugs crap? This kid’s peers at Boston College, around the corner from my house, would never appear in the public spotlight because weed is decriminalized here. It would not appear in the news because nobody cares. Oddly, there aren’t scary, crazy, dangerous people running around high off the weed ala Reefer Madness. Look at crime numbers in the past few years since weed was decriminalized here–i bet they are significantly lower.

  3. lush 07/12/2010 at 2:36 PM #

    also heard on the radio that quan was arrested with another misdemeanor this summer for having a bb gun on campus. you would think that would be mentioned. oh wait, im suprised this is even in the paper

  4. tuckerdorm1983 07/12/2010 at 3:55 PM #

    maybe Quan can get together with Kuhn, Sweezy, Vermiglio and Bryan to exchange tips about the chronic

  5. jhmd2000 07/12/2010 at 9:13 PM #

    “You can bet your ass that Sturdivant will be on the filed when the Tarheels open the season in Atlanta against LSU.”

    I’ll take that bet if you can show me where the “filed” is, anyway?

    Sorry, I wouldn’t normally be these snarky but this thread is so juvenile it seemed appropriate. Please quit dragging this usually excellent site down.

  6. McCallum 07/12/2010 at 10:45 PM #

    If shooting yankees has not been made a sport YET I suggest that we submit it to the NCAA NOW.

    Doing things the way they do it up in BOSTON is the great error in American politics and life. We’ve wandered down that Puritan path of the shining city on a hill and that has causes us a number of ideological wrecks. From the Unitarians taking over Harvard in the 1820s to the foulest rounds of politically correct techno babble that now pervades the most common of discourse here in the land of the oppressed can we just stop doing what those folks up north keep telling us we should do?

    Now the fair haired child of America has always been found up north. The villain is always the slothful South with our knuckles dragging about as we attempt to maintain some type of moral order(and kicking the back side of dope heads does maintain order). But all of this yankee knows better than you blather would cause even the greatest admirer of Melville’s Billy Budd (one big ol’ dud of a book) to find Claggart, who is axiomatic to the South, a more common sense of a fellow.

    Be gone with your yankee morals I say and take that nakkied eyeball of Emerson’s with you as you go. Though I must ask that before you depart up I-95 to the land where potheads can toke it up without fear of the police or the petty crimes that drug use always bring along………could you use that nakkied eyeball to determine just why so many of you flee to these vile and oppressive lands?

    And Quan was busted at the Bojangles of all places. Maybe he just got tired of cruising the old Sky City parking lot and hit across the road for a Code Red Mnt Dew and a doobie?

    McCallum (yeah…..that McCallum)

  7. 61Packer 07/12/2010 at 10:56 PM #

    On Channel 5’s sports tonight, it was reported that Coach Davis would discipline Mr. Sturdivant ‘immediately’. That sounds to me like he’ll have absorbed his punishment in time for the LSU game and will be on the field that night, like jhmd200 said.

    The comment above that asked if we’d ever get over this stupid, illogical, wasteful war on drugs was troubling to me. I’m assuming that bluelena69 was referring to not only pot/weed/reefer/marijuana but also to the hard stuff as well, since the word “drugs” was used.

    A few years ago, after a State-UVA night game, I was tied up in traffic leaving CFS due to an accident at the intersection of 54 and Nowell Road. I was one of the fortunate who was only inconvenienced; 5 people, including one I knew, died when a drunk plowed them down while they were assisting another motorist.

    Do you think the families and friends of these innocent victims would want acts like this one decriminalized?

  8. Wufpacker 07/12/2010 at 11:26 PM #

    ^ You said that a “drunk” plowed them down.

    First and foremost, regardless of WHAT substance someone chooses to put into their bodies, operating a motor vehicle while impaired is still very illegal, as it should be.

    Second, if my family gets wiped out by a drunk driver, please explain to me how a responsible adult using marijuana in the privacy of their own home is going to make a difference for me, or any of my now deceased family members, one way or another.

    Perhaps I’m misinterpreting the correct meaning of your post. If so, my apologies.

  9. MatSci94 07/12/2010 at 11:31 PM #

    Of course not. No one is saying that driving under the influence of anything should be legal. The legality of a substance has little bearing on people misusing it, and doing things that put others in jeopardy. I’m not in favor of ‘legalizing’ anything, but I don’t think you could describe the decisions of X being legal and Y being illegal as anything but arbitrary.

  10. McCallum 07/12/2010 at 11:35 PM #

    Well if all that is really required is a responsible adult then Katie bar the door!!!

    Notice how subjective the term responsible will become in any such discussion and the atomized man of modernity rears that head.

    Just doing my thing, not harming any one……….pardon me but are you going to eat that gallon of ice cream?

    McCallum

  11. cooldrip 07/12/2010 at 11:47 PM #

    Wufpacker as you know most people in this country are completely ignorant when it comes to cannabis, it’s pharmacological effects, the history of it’s use, and the highly questionable and completely subjective criminalization of it. It’s not neccesarily their fault; they have been fed scientific and political lies their entire life.

    By the way, for all you fellow southerners, if your family lived in the rural south before 1930 they most certainly used cannabis. For medicine and also for recreation and mood alteration. Today a number of fine upstanding southerners rely on illegal cannabis crops to feed their families. There are others who give away their crop to the sick, who need the medicine and cannot access it legally in our fair South.

    For anyone who wants to rid themselves of their ignorance on this subject, I have thousands of pages of medical research, historical findings, legal opinions on the process by which it was made illegal, etc. For those who hate cannabis and think of it like any other drug, including alcohol, they will be highly dissapointed when California fully legalizes it this fall. How long do you think the other states will wait when they see not only the windfall of tax revenue, but the DECREASE in crime rates and prison populations?

  12. McCallum 07/13/2010 at 6:08 AM #

    My goodness, I’m just is not smart enough to realize all of the wonderful benefits of dope both now and in the past. How could I have missed all of that with my knowledge of history, culture, chemistry, soils, and losers?

    The only more blighted source of revenue and enjoyment to catch heck around here would be the lawn dart.

    I suggest a move to California or Boston so that you could be around more “enlightened” folks.

    I’ll ship you a few hundred thousands lawn darts.

    But a definer if you would, what constitutes “a number”……..is that 5 or 5,000,0000? If feeding a family is a noble thing, which it is, then wouldn’t feeding them through the sale of other drugs be just as noble? If the act is of no matter then anything you’d do to feed that family is valid, right?

    McCallum

  13. Wufpacker 07/13/2010 at 9:14 AM #

    McCallum,
    No one has called you “not smart”. There are plenty of very intelligent folks who, for a reason that puzzles me, still hold some very antiquated views regarding marijuana. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I am not one to profess that anything that is mood altering should be legal.

    Perhaps you think that is hypocritical of me, and maybe it is. But the case, at least for marijuana, is clear to me. I won’t go into details here for it would be boring for most, and redundant for others.

    You are correct that “responsible” CAN be a slippery slope. And that is why, like alcohol, I feel that marijuana should be legal, but bad behavior by some brought about by it should not be legal. For example, laws for marijuana that parallel current open alcohol container/motor vehicle laws must be observed and enforced. For me, at least in this case, it all boils down to personal responsibility. If someone is able to use marijuana responsibly, enjoy it and not cause harm to anyone else I don’t believe the government should have the ability to keep them from doing so.

    Again, I am not giving a blanket statement that all substances should be legal. If you’d like to take them on a case by case basis we can do that, but strawman arguments accusing me of having the opinion that ALL substances should be legal, or even that ALL people will use marijuana responsibly, are invalid. I’ve said nothing of the sort.

    Incidently, I don’t personally use marijuana and I wouldn’t if it were legal. I do not drink. But that doesn’t mean I believe that the government should be able to tell others that they cannot. Our country was founded on principles of the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, among others. Again, that does not mean I think EVERYTHING should be legal, but when the evidence against is flimsy and largely fictitious, as I believe most people’s beliefs about marijuana are; when in actuality, something being legal will not likely cause widespread harm, and very well might have benefit, then I believe we MUST err toward liberty, or else we risk eventually becoming as oppressive a society as those which we have historically opposed.

    All that being said, I realize that this is my OPINION and not fact. For that reason, I do have to state that if it were legalized and then after a year, or 5 years, or whatever, we see that there is “overwhelming” evidence of widespread harm, then I would not have a problem returning it to the status of being illegal. The problem is that this has not been done. Marijuana was made illegal for some very silly reasons, and then propagandized. My own opinion is that this was mostly political, but again that is only opinion. Since it has not been legal during the lives of most people, many believe the propaganda and do not bother to find out the truth.

  14. Pano Fasoulas 07/13/2010 at 9:38 AM #

    From the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse:

    “Research has shown that marijuana’s adverse impact on learning and memory can last for days or weeks after the acute effects of the drug wear off.2 As a result, someone who smokes marijuana every day may be functioning at a suboptimal intellectual level all of the time.

    Research on the long-term effects of marijuana abuse indicates some changes in the brain similar to those seen after long-term abuse of other major drugs. For example, cannabinoid withdrawal in chronically exposed animals leads to an increase in the activation of the stress-response system3 and changes in the activity of nerve cells containing dopamine.4 Dopamine neurons are involved in the regulation of motivation and reward, and are directly or indirectly affected by all drugs of abuse.” http://www.nida.nih.gov/infofacts/marijuana.html

    Don’t tell me the above isn’t true. I’ve seen these things happen to people I know. That first paragraph is particularly damning. Get high once and days or weeks later your brain is still affected.

  15. Wufpacker 07/13/2010 at 10:36 AM #

    “Research on the long-term effects of marijuana abuse”

    Pano,
    I certainly am not one who will tell you that there is no way that marijuana abuse can be harmful. That being said, many of those studies, at least the ones I’ve read, have some basic problems. First of all, they are “survey” studies, meaning that researchers are trying to go back in time and account for all of the things that they now are observing, without having had any control over the situation as it developed. That’s not to say these sorts of studies are useless. They are not. But it is difficult, at best, to take any hard or definite conclusions from them.

    Without going into any great detail, it is impossible to structure a study and go back and have any confidence at all in your conclusions. Most “evidence” of any scientific matter is gained by having a double blind study where all variables are controlled by researchers so that results can be reliably compared. Studies that go back and look at things that have already happened and try to draw a conclusion in the present are not worthless, but their value is mostly going to be of giving a starting point or “suspicion” of sorts, and then a true controlled study is done to try to confirm or deny these initial suspicions.

    One big issue, however, is the word “abuse”. Your definition of abuse may not be the same as mine, and thus these sorts of survey studies will not be consistent. I promise you that I could set up a survey study that would “Prove” that marijuana “abuse” increases intelligence, if I so chose. When the researchers have an agenda, almost no study can be considered valid.

    Moreover, all of this about studies and research regarding the “abuse” of marijuana is pretty pointless. Personally, even if legal I don’t believe someone should abuse marijuana, but that doesn’t mean I think it is my place, or that of the government, to tell them not to do so, unless their abuse of it, or anything else for that matter, is harming and/or impinging on the rights of others. And someone else’s choice to abuse marijuana, or alcohol, should not in and of itself be grounds for prohibiting someone else from using it responsibly.

    Government should not try to legislate based on “perceived” morality. It will never be successful in doing such and it will always, given enough time, be doomed to fail.

  16. Wufpacker 07/13/2010 at 10:54 AM #

    I do not like to use the following arguments to argue for the legalization of marijuana, and thus have not included them in my posts above. Honestly, I don’t think these arguments should be used in that way. But I do think these facts are interesting, so I will place them here and not argue one way or another their validity.

    As has been stated above, there are studies that purport to show the harm that marijuana can cause. Regardless of the validity of these studies, I am not blind and I do believe that abuse of marijuana, or any other substance, can be harmful. If I drink enough water in the next few hours I can be dead by dinnertime if I choose.

    There is as much (and probably more) research showing the devastating effects of tobacco and alcohol abuse. Thousands of people will die TODAY as a result of abusing these two substances. Billions of dollars are spent every year for treatment of alcohol abuse and tobacco.

    But right now, if I choose to do so, I can walk less than a half mile and purchase a 5th of liquor and a carton of cigarettes, and be back before noon and begin abusing them both, without fear of arrest or even very much “morality” from the people around me. At least some of those same people would be horrified if I returned, not with alcohol and tobacco, but with marijuana. Some of them would report me to law enforcement.

    It is my opinion that I would not be doing any more harm to myself (or anyone else, for that matter) than if I had alcohol and tobacco, maybe less. But “perceived” morality, in my opinion, is the reason why I can do one without fear of significant legal or social repercussions, and not the other.

    Why should my government, which is supposed to be here to serve me, and not vice versa, be able to arbitrarily say I can do one and not the other? Shouldn’t that be my own choice?

  17. lush 07/13/2010 at 11:13 AM #

    Pano,

    Why do you put more faith in that study then you do in the countless studies showing the non habit forming medicinal uses of marijuana? You know, the ones that have gotten medicinal approved in 15 states, legalization soon in CA, and decriminalization in almost every other civilized country in the world.

  18. cooldrip 07/13/2010 at 11:26 AM #

    Wufpacker having just read your posts, you have said it better than I could hope to. Anyone interested in this subject should research the process by which cannabis was made illegal. Study the “yellow journalism” tactics used by Hearst, Hearst timber holdings at the time, and Hearst’s relationship with Federal Narcotics Bureau chief J.D. Anslinger. The same J.D. Anslinger who LIED to a congressional committee when queried on this subject, and then told the same LIE to a joint session of Congress. Prohibition had nothing to do with public safety or even with cannabis itself; it was all about PAPER, both newspaper and “green” paper. Ever wonder why hemp cultivation is illegal in the USA? Despite the fact it is a more sustainable, more renewable, less expensive source of paper products than wood?

  19. packplantpath 07/13/2010 at 11:50 AM #

    Hemp cultivation is illegal because, if I am not mistaken, it is the same species of plant as the one you can smoke. Sure, you could smoke all the hemp you want and get nothing but a cough, but our laws are not structured in such a manner to differentiate between two plants that appear identical except in chemical composition. It’s just too darn complicated.

    I agree that prohibition is stupid, but I don’t buy the theory that it is all a vast conspiracy by special interests to make paper out of wood. It no doubt started that way. There is quite good evidence that is the case. But it has morphed in to a perception problem with the ever popular “war on drugs”.

    But hey, I’d be just fine with complete decriminalization of all drugs. Putting addicts in jail helps nobody.

  20. Pano Fasoulas 07/13/2010 at 5:58 PM #

    lush,
    I posted that because I see tons of stuff that says dope’s ok. So, I decided to search for something that is opposed to dope. The amazing thing was that it 100% confirmed my personal experience. Every person I knew in college who got into smoking dope did not finish their degree within 5 years of starting. I knew tons of people who smoked and drank alot (me included) who finished on time. I knew some really smart people who wasted their lives away in high school too. There’s a reason why they call it dope. I’m not saying that it’s not possible to lead a normal productive life while smoking dope. But, my experience tells me exactly what this government sponsored research says. As far as CA legalizing it, if I lived there I would vote against it. But, I’m a state’s rights kind of person. If that’s what CA wants then let them have it. But, don’t pretend to tell me that there’s nothing harmful with dope. I can point to quite a few lost or delayed lives.

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