Especially considering the fact that it’s less harmful - or at least equally so - to your body than alcohol or tobacco. We’ve been conditioned to think that smoking weed will automatically turn you into a braindead leech on society when in reality nothing of the sort happens. Perfectly upstanding members of society can go to the work in the morning, send his kids to bed at night, and then go outside to smoke a joint and unwind on a Friday night.
I’m totally baffled at the idea that rational people consider smoking marijuana to be more dangerous than smoking conventional tobacco. Obviously, tobacco doesn’t bring the high that marijuana does - but it does bring the threat of basically every cancer imaginable, heart disease, and stroke (and that’s still not bringing up the carcinogenic effects of secondhand smoke). Marijuana also doesn’t have any inherently addictive substances like nicotine, and taking hits out of a good vaporizer doesn’t cause any of the health effects listed above. And, of course, you can’t overdose on marijuana like you can with alcohol (and other hard drugs, for that matter).
While the argument on the mental effects and the associated high with marijuana is initially more convincing, it too doesn’t hold any water upon closer inspection.. People who are drunk have even less control over their actions than people at a [7] or [8] (that translates to “stoned as shit”). They’re more prone to violence, and when the whole affair is said and done, they vomit on your toilet seat and pass out on the bathroom floor. A majority of date rape involves the effects of alcohol. So what are you going to complain about when you’re dealing with people who are high? That they clean out your pantry because they got the munchies? Give me a fucking break.
The “gateway drug” argument is even worse. It falls straight into the lap of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy in that there are far too many factors to consider before making the correlation between marijuana use and hard drug use. The most prominent of these factors is exposure to the black market. This exposure - which could be easily prevented by the legalization and recognition of marijuana as no more harmful, or less harmful than, alcohol - often leads people to think “Hey, I know how to access these hard drugs now. What’s stopping me from trying?” But even then, the correlation is still very weak.
So - why is smoking tobacco legal at age 18 when it is a far more devastating life choice than smoking marijuana? Again, I want to revisit the point of social conditioning. In the past, sex outside of marriage was viewed as an inherently immoral activity, but it’s now becoming a far more socially acceptable topic. Comic books were thought to cause crime and catalyze the downfall of American youth until people opened their eyes and realised how ridiculous that was. Alcohol and Prohibition went down the same path. On the other end of the spectrum, people are now realising how harmful tobacco can be to one’s health and American culture has seen a slow but steady shift away from its historic association with tobacco. All of these societal shifts that I’ve cited are based on rational, logical thinking. So why hasn’t the same been applied to the fact that marijuana has negligible long term health effects and does not impact one’s mental capacity outside of the initial high?
In this respect, America - and indeed, the world’s - treatment of marijuana is an anomaly. I like to believe that a majority, or at least a significant outspoken minority, of human beings are indeed capable of making rational and informed decisions. And for the most part, this belief has held true with a couple of notable exceptions - our failure to recognise gay rights and treatment of pot being among them.
But to be completely honest, I see change on the horizon. Colorado and Washington will be voting to legalize the recreational use of marijuana for those above the drinking age in November. Medical (or maybe “medical”) marijuana is approved for use in a significant number of states. I can only hope that one day, marijuana will become as socially acceptable as the use of alcohol.
Maybe I’m being too optimistic about my views on human nature. Naive as they may be, the original point still holds true - the way we treat marijuana is a total outlier when compared to its counterparts.
So that’s my two cents on pot.
