haven't seen the video(I'm listening to music so can't watch it now), but I think smoking/having a bong in public isn't necessarily stupid/inapropriate. in my younger years(1-3 years ago) I have smoked bongs in public, and got away with it.
one of the most memorable was on a festival, but ofcourse festivals are different. this was a festival on a square in the citycenter, and there I met a guy who had broughtr a bong with him, so we formed a circle with some more people.
but there was also a time where one of my friends had just bought a bong, so we wanted to try it out. wich we did while sitting on a bench in the park.
and another time when a friend had his bong with him(a mini-bong) and we smoked bowl after bowl trough it somewhere next to a canal.
however from your comments I get the clip is more about just provocating with a prank. in that case it could indeed hurt legalisation efforts. but it could go the other way too, I once read that the decriminalisation in my own country(the netherlands) was partly caused by the actions of provo's(apparently they had a point-based game where you got points if you got arrested)(I don't know much about it because it's before my time), so I'm not really against such actions.
semirelated, whenever I hear of something related to policeprovocation it makes me think back to this clip:
the guitarguy in that clip is someone I kind of know(went to the same highschool, saw him dancing on the tables in the canteen a few times).
it's in dutch, so I'll translate some phrases:
when he is walking up to the cops, he says 'this is going to be fun'
he starts off with 'I want to turn in myself for a horrible murder', then when the police object against the camera being on them, he says they're corrupt while he walks away. the cop says 'have you ever had a kick under your ass?'(multiple times, kont=ass, schop=kick), and to shut up, after that the insult that made the cop punch him was that he called the cop a 'monkey in a uniform'
The officer states immediately after a one second sniff, he's free to go. Would any of us enjoy being "punked" for shock video publicly? I think that officer was pretty cool for what went down. I almost felt like if the guys would of like announced "haa we got you" or something like that, he probably would of kidded around back with them,imo. And I am not a leo sympathizer by any means at all. But this officer did what he is paid to do. Noticed very suspicious behavior, investigated by smelling after the guys quit acting like spolied sea-unts, and noted no law being broke, and was finished. What if the same officer is in you and your families neighborhood and sees a couple shady people with hypodermic needles in hand, looking ready to shoot up. Should he assume since needles are also used for insulin, to not investigate whether somebody may be speedballing out on the corner of your street? Please feel free change that analogy with anything that may be deemed suspicious to most of us. Burglary tools, guns(replica,bb,air rifles,real), 20 gal gas can and a big Bic lighter, whatever.
