Reefer Madness?

A few days ago, I posted a tongue-in cheek satire about how government over-regulates just about everything it touches. The piece was called “The Real Problem With Legalizing Marijuana” and it attracted almost ten times as much readership as anything else I’ve written. I’d like to think it was because people are interested in government but that wouldn’t be true.

It attracted more attention because many people thought it was about marijuana and judging from the response I received, there is apparently a very large constituency that is heavily invested in the issue of marijuana legalization.

After reading it, most people got the satire and had a chuckle but not all. Some were quite concerned that I was making assumptions that I wasn’t qualified to make. That may be true but the great thing about satire is that it doesn’t require qualification, just a sense of humour which also seemed to be lacking in some who read the piece.

More than a few who read the piece were quite perturbed by my reasoning, especially as they took it to be a serious attempt to undermine efforts to legalize the demon weed. I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe they were the victims of smoking a little too much Mother Nature and were perhaps, as a result, the best argument against legalization.

For clarity’s sake, let me state that I really don’t care if they legalize marijuana or not. I am not threatened by the fact that many smoke it and my life won’t be minimized if it disappears tomorrow. Marijuana was far more important to me when I was a teenager and thought it was one more symbol of rebellious freedom against the establishment, my parents and anyone else that made the enemies list.

I don’t feel like that now.

Marijuana has some therapeutic medicinal use and I think that should be explored and opened up. Certainly, weed can’t be any more harmful to those in chronic pain, suffering from MS or other debilitating diseases than the prescription medications they get through their doctors. Most of those drugs are so powerful that in a sixty-second commercial, as much as forty-five seconds can be devoted to the harmful side-effects of those drugs and only fifteen seconds given to promoting its benefits.

From my own personal experience and that of folks I have known over the years, there are two basic side-effects to smoking a few joints now and then.

The first is becoming so mellow that you willingness to do much more than breathe can be quite prevalent in some. This in and of itself isn’t much of a problem, the world could probably do with a little more mellowing but it can become an issue if that term paper has to be in tomorrow or your boss is expecting you to show up on time for the client presentation.

The other issue, and I believe a more serious one, is the craving for things like chocolate chip cookies that often accompanies marijuana use. As I have seen with some of my friends in the past, this can eventually lead to excessive weight gain and there is just nothing cool about being tubby while trying to look ‘with it’ while smoking a joint; especially if your jeans have become two sizes two small as a result. I know…been there….done that.

At the end of the day, marijuana which used to be legal (as did cocaine, actually) is really one of those ridiculous debates that fill too much time and which are clouded by too much prejudice and bias. We have far more legal products that are more harmful to waste so much time debating the evils of weed.

What does concern me though is that I can draw thousands to read a piece on the legalization of marijuana and only hundreds to read a piece on child abuse or the undermining of our democracies. It makes me wonder just where, exactly, our values as a society lay.

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em by all means but take a moment to think about the real issues in the world. Worrying about legalizing marijuana when almost a million children are missing in North America or The Attorney General of the United States is able to justify the killing of American citizens abroad is nothing less than reefer madness.

Or maybe it’s just one more example of a world going mad. I’ll let you decide.

LINKS
The Real Problem With Legalizing Marijuana
http://bearsrant.blogspot.com/2012/03/real-problem-with-legalizing-marijuana.html

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