The quote of the day comes from ESPN Writer LZ Granderson, who, during a recent appearance on CNN, kind of summed up my thoughts on the people who consider the legalization of marijuana to be Priority One in the 2012 presidential race:
If you're basing your vote on who's going to be president about whether or not they let you roll up a blunt then you're just an idiot and I hope you don't have the right to vote anyway.
I've never been a big fan of smoking pot. Yeah, I've done it a few times, but being that I seem to have lived by the motto "Go Big or Go Home" when it came to kicking off my storied career in drug use -- diving directly into LSD and ecstasy rather than going through the various "gateways" -- I always kind of found pot smoking to be a bit anti-climactic. Great, so you laughed a lot and ate too much shitty food and were often forced to hang out with idiots who spent hours engaging in long-winded discussions that employed a lot of stoner logic. Sounds like a blast. That being said, I don't begrudge anyone their habits as long as they're not hurting anyone else in the process, and I accept unequivocally the absurdity of demonizing a plant simply because it happens to make people feel good; the political pressure to keep marijuana illegal amounts to nothing more than the senseless perpetuation of a puritanical blue law, and one that needlessly damages the lives of innocent people. If alcohol is legal I see no reason why pot shouldn't be as well.
A couple of weeks back, though, Bob Cesca and I had a little debate going on our podcast and radio show about the merits -- or lack thereof, in my opinion -- of the "culture" of marijuana. I'm not talking about the folks who simply enjoy smoking it on occasion; I'm talking about the organized effort -- as organized as a bunch of stoned people can be, anyway -- to celebrate marijuana and its many supposed merits in an effort to help it gain wider social acceptance and to essentially destigmatize it.
You know, the "movement" full of people who basically take the diametrically opposing side of the argument to those who feel that pot is the devil's weed, mythologizing it rather than castigating it, claiming that it heals all wounds and has near-magical properties that can be used in the service of mankind if the closed-minded politicians would just give it a chance. The people who actually kind of consider "4/20" a holiday. The people who always have a dissertation ready on the history of hemp and how it's different than the part of the plant that fucks you up. The people who swear that marijuana is medically necessary for millions and that they can prove it.
Yeah, that nonsense.
Here's my issue with the marijuana culture -- the, ahem, "fight" to gain national acceptance of pot beyond the fact that a hell of a lot of people use it or have used it at one point in their lives: it's for the most part disingenuous. It's based on a lot of near-comical rationalization, the kind of reasoning a four-year-old comes up with and rattles off when he or she wants to do something a parent won't allow. Sure, maybe hemp can be made into all kinds of wonderful products; maybe pot-smoking can ease the pain of terminal cancer; maybe there are religions that require it as part of their ritual; maybe it's been used throughout the years by brilliant minds and its history is so interesting that university-level classes can be taught on it; the fact is none of that would make a damn bit of difference to those who advocate loudly for the legalization of marijuana and who rally around it if it didn't get you really, really high. If you removed the "it gets you high" element of the equation, the rest of it would pretty much fall apart because no one would give a damn. Pot is popular because it messes you up good -- everything else is incidental.
Again, I have no issue with people wanting to make themselves feel good -- I did drugs for years for exactly that reason, although I never felt the need to concoct a "holiday" honoring my use or to create a feeling of solidarity with other drugged-up doofs just like me -- but for God's sake be honest about why you like weed. You like to get high. That hemp-is-beneficial-to-mankind and I-need-it-as-medicine horseshit is exactly that: horseshit. If you require proof of the farcical nature of the latter argument, you need look no further than Venice Beach, near where I live in Los Angeles. Got a hundred bucks and a headache? Congratulations, there are 800-some-odd "doctors" available right on the shore who'll be happy to give you a medical marijuana card -- because it's, you know, medicine.
A couple of months ago, the front page story here at the Huffington Post was, for a time, a mildly outraged report on how the feds had cracked down on a popular Oakland pot business with the amusingly high-clever name "Oaksterdam University" and how it represented the most pronounced salvo yet in "the Obama administration's nationwide assault on medical marijuana." The article detailed the ways in which President Obama's justice department had targeted medicinal marijuana dispensaries and users and even included the inadvertently hilarious line, "There's no question that Obama is the worst president on medical marijuana," from Rob Kampia, Executive Director of the Marijuana Policy Project. While I couldn't agree more that expending federal resources and tax dollars on fighting marijuana use is a monumental waste, I also can't work up a whole lot of indignation over the fact that Barack Obama isn't doing right by the pot bloc. Hitching your political wagon to the singular question of whether or not the President of the United States is friendly to your desire to do drugs is way beyond ridiculous. And again, you can attempt to couch it in whatever supposedly principled terms you'd like -- in the end, you're pushing for the legalization of pot because it makes you feel good.
There's nothing wrong with feeling good and the government shouldn't play nanny and decide how good is too good to be permitted. But those who excitedly ballyhoo weed and the use of it like they're doing important, necessary or admirable work need a serious reality check. You like to get high and it's very likely nothing more noble than that. Admit it.
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"Again, I have no issue with people wanting to make themselves feel good -- I did drugs for years for exactly that reason, although I never felt the need to concoct a "holiday" honoring my use or to create a feeling of solidarity with other drugged-up doofs just like me -- but for God's sake be honest about why you like weed. You like to get high."
There's a difference between why a person might like weed and why a person might want weed legalized. Chez uses horrible logic to conflate the 2 phenomena. I don't smoke weed. HOWEVER, I don't like the idea of a government that arrests adults for WHAT THEY PUT INTO THEIR OWN BODIES! So I want weed legalized.
If we can't even control our own bodies, then we perpetuate a paradigm allowing the government to take more and more control over our lives "for our own good". No thanks.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21654828
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19189659
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16698671
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19364790
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11949984.
So.... Why should the Government continue to say it causes long term intelligence issues when... studies show that might not be the case ?
Why should our Government continue to say it has no medicinal value, yet continue to ship it to the remaining members of the IND trial without medical followups ?
Why should our Government continue to say that it isn't safe because it hasn't gone through the rigors of the FDA, while at the same time our FDA doesn't cover Vitamins you can find in any Wal-Mart ?
That being said, failing to deal with the insane realities of the drug policies of this country have created the opportunity for Ron Paul to gain more popularity than his ideology deserves. The same can be said for foreign policy, but that's another thread entirely.
The American people are beginning to wake up to the injustice of criminalizing marijuana possession and use. When listing the negatives of marijuana use, none are more destructive than what is done by the government to those who get caught. The solution is more destructive than the "problem". Nobody has ever died from marijuana that wasn't shot by a cop, or a victim of gang activity that never would have happened if our laws had not created a profit incentive for dealing marijuana.
You come with the same old, tired, stoner stereotypes to validate your opinion and it really shows your lack of education on the subject.
Further, the fraudulent prohibition has never accomplished even one positive thing. It has ONLY caused vast amounts of crime, corruption, violence, death and the severe diminishment of EVERYONE'S freedom.
There is NO domestic issue more important than ending what is essentially the American Inquisition. -- That makes the brave souls willing to stand up to confront the most powerful regime on the planet VERY noble - and patriotic - heroes, indeed!
Why I Want Marijuana Legalized by:Thinking Clearly... http://thinkinglookingclearly.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-i-want-marijuana-legalized.html?spref=tw
Its about your freedom, and all the lives that have been needlessly lost just to stop a plant that never killed anyone.
The issue of cannabis decrim/legalization is compelling simply because it's unique in it's depth and breadth of potential impact: public safety, organized crime - gang influence on children and cartel power/violence on our borders, the size and cost of our prisoner population, revenues, commerce/jobs/economy, health/medicine, protecting children, medicine and medical research, individual autonomy/Liberty, social justice (race inequality), and environment to name a few.
If there is a single issue that could change this country for better at the moment it is this one. If this hasn't occurred to the OP, it is because he hasn't taken the time to analyze it.
The idea of a cannabis culture is nonsense. Cannabis is a mainstream issue. The "stoners" are just a very small part of the huge number of people who use cannabis.
Think about how foolish you sound to the numerous prominent marijuana activists who use marijuana rarely and sometimes never. Many of the loudest voices in this movement don't even do the thing that defines their value system according to you.
We support legalization for the same reasons you do, and your attempt to stigmatize and disparage us is baffling, unwarranted, and offensive.
One example per the National Cancer Institute: The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep. In the practice of integrative oncology, the health care provider may recommend medicinal Cannabis not only for symptom management but also for its possible DIRECT ANTITUMOR EFFECT.