Your Parent's Pants Are on Fire!!

More and more people are getting on board with the legalization of marijuana, which is certainly a positive development. There was a time not too long ago when the legality of pot was a marginal issue at best, supported only by neo-hippies and Dennis Kucinich. In the 1990’s, my hometown of Ann Arbor, MI was filled to the brim with Phish enthusiasts, lackadaisically asking University of Michigan students to sign petitions to be sent to some unreceptive senator or whatever. No one took them seriously, in part because it’s always best to ignore strangers holding clipboards, but also because they couldn’t have chosen a worse city in which to fight for their cause. The penalty for marijuana possession in Ann Arbor is a $25.00 fine; when I was a kid, it was $5.00, but inflation’s a bitch. In any case, it’s still cheaper to be caught with an ounce of weed, a bong, and some rolling papers than to get ticketed for parking your car in a lot without the appropriate sticker, and a stoner facing essentially no penalty is not going to take time out of his busy schedule (I use the term loosely) to sign your fucking petition. He wants a donut and he wants it now.

Then we all went broke, and being poor changes everything. Suddenly average people realized they were financing the war on drugs, and given that we were all unemployed it began to seem like a waste of precious resources. After all, everyone who’s been to college has smoked pot, and very few of us are hanging out in alleys, doling out hand jobs in exchange for heroin. For the most part, whatever fun we had as young adults in no way impeded our path to gainful employment, homes, partners, and children. So why are we paying a bazillion dollars a day to punish kids? No one seems to know. Here’s a list of reasons to legalize marijuana.

1. It’s fun, a fact we’re all aware of because almost everyone has done it. If your parents attended high school or college after 1966, and claim to have never smoked, their pants are on fire.

2. It’s waaaaaaay less harmful than alcohol. Alcohol is poison. It may be safe in moderation, but there’s no doubt it’s a toxic substance. A 50-year old alcoholic looks like he’s about to keel over and die. A 50-year old pothead looks like he could have done a little more with his life had he not followed the Dead for 30 years.

3. It’s waaaaaaay less harmful than cigarettes. Did you know there’s never been a single recorded case of lung cancer attributed to pot-smoking? Just a little tidbit from me to you.

4. If it’s legalized, it can be taxed. We need money. We need money real bad, and this is a cash cow waiting to happen. A 10% tax on pot sold at the pot store would bring in an almost unbelievable amount of revenue, and potheads would be more than willing to pay the premium for the convenience of being able to drop by the corner store to pick up an eighth.

5. If it’s legalized, it can be regulated. I don’t necessarily think it’s important to regulate it, but I’m sure that’s an appealing notion to some.

6. Legalization would make the world a safer place for your kids. As it is, your friendly neighborhood pot dealer could very well be peddling coke and Oxycontin on the side. You don’t want your otherwise well-adjusted kid getting mixed up with unsavory characters just because he wants to smoke a little dope. If weed were legal your kid could just pay a homeless guy outside 7/11 to go in and get it for him, no exposure to hard drugs necessary. This strategy has always worked for beer, and it will work for pot.

7. This is related to reason 6, and it’s something I never hear people mention, but I think it’s vitally important. Lumping pot together with other drugs gives the false impression that all drugs are created equal. Once you’ve smoked pot, why not eat 60 mushrooms and trip at Disneyland? They’re both illegal. And once you’ve eaten 60 mushrooms and somehow managed not to be institutionalized, why not try a line of coke? I’m of the mind that the legalization of marijuana would put it in a different category, and make your kid less likely to experiment with other drugs.

Lastly, I would like to say fuck medical marijuana. It’s a stupid joke. This is not a drug with tremendous therapeutic value, and we should stop being so disingenuous as to claim it is. Sure, it will make sick people who’ve lost their appetites hungry, and it might make you care less that you’re at death’s door, but it’s not going to do much else. Let’s call a spade a spade. Pot is a drug that people enjoy using. Its harmful effects are negligent, and adults can and should be trusted to decide for themselves whether or not to use it.