It’s the miracle cure for what ails ya! It’s the marvel of the age. There’s no limit to the benefits of this amazing substance. It helps, cures, or relieves symptoms of alcoholism, Alzheimer’s, anorexia, anxiety, depression, attention deficit disorder, autism, bipolar disorder, diabetes, cancer, bruxism, Crohn’s disease, breast cancer, glaucoma, gastritis, HIV/Aids, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, mesothelioma, migraine, multiple sclerosis, nausea, obesity, pain, period cramps, PTSD, rheumatiod arthritis, spastic colon and stutteriing (1).
Yes, folks it’s CANNABIS, the miracle cure of the age and you can get this marvelous stuff for just six easy payments of $19.95 per month. But wait, that’s not all. Order today and get your free genuine, deluxe, straight from the Far East, Hindu hooka – the perfect method for extracting the most pleasure from your pot-smoking experience. And all you gotta do is get the stupid hidebound, reactionary politicians up in your state’s legislature to go ahead and legalize that lovely weed that will make us all happy, healthy and relaxed. Because with all this good stuff that marijuana does, what could possibly go wrong?
Plenty! The law of unintended consequences is already on the books and any attempt to control human behavior through the passing of laws, always causes things to happen that no one intended. Temperance workers didn’t count on Prohibition creating Chicago gang wars. All they wanted was for the law to force their husbands to sober up and stop lapping them around of a Saturday night. More on that later.
Let’s look at some of the reasons such weighty medical authorities as The Huffing and Puffington Post (2) say we should hurry up and legalize waccy baccy.
1. No one has ever died of a marijuana overdose. Now there’s a great reason if I ever heard one. “No one’s died yet.” Whoopty doo! So far as I know, no one’s ever died from eating sawdust yet either, but that’s no reason to make it standard restaurant fare. Besides, I beg to differ. My son decided he’d give up pot, but he had this big stash so, knowing no one’s ever died from smoking pot, he rolled up the whole stash and smoked it all in one night. He spent three days in the hospital in a coma. It seems his friend infused his rolling papers with PCP. But he didn’t die and it wasn’t the fault of the marijuana. Nope, but one wonders about whether his judgment wasn’t somewhat impaired when he was making decisions that night. The whole “no one’s died” meme is disengenuous anyway. It should say no one’s died “directly” from pot. Plenty have got themselves shuffled off from this mortal coil as a result of pot-fueled bad decisions. Many a pot-addled redneck’s famous last words have been, “Hey, watch this!” In Colorado, the year recreational pot was legalized, marijuana-related traffic deaths jumped 32%. So much for pot never killed anyone.
2. Around 40% of Americans have already admitted to using marijuana. Well there’s another dubious reason to legalize the stuff if I ever heard one. If 40% of Americans admit to having driven while drunk, would you consider that a great reason to legalize drunk driving. While it may be true, though I doubt it, it’s not a good reason to introduce the other 60% of Americans to it. Hell, these are the same people who won’t let folks smoke in public lest they blow smoke on someone who doesn’t want to breathe tobacco fumes. Should not the same courtesy be extended to those of us who don’t want our brains addled by pot?
3. Marijuana is much safer than already legalized drugs. Well, let’s look at the chart (2). Apparently pot ranks just lower than heroin, cocaine and amphetimines and just above benzodiazapines, Ketamine (horse tranquilizers), and anabolic steroids. Unless I misunderstood the argument, none of those “drugs” are legal to use without a doctor’s prescription if at all. So I’d challenge that statement unless Huffpo can come up with some actual “legal” openly available drugs for the list to compare it to – you know, oranges to oranges. Wonder how the hospitalization rate for Tylenol or Dramamine compares to that for pot?
4. Marijuana has a very low risk of abuse. Oh, really? Apparently, the authors of this article are using some sort of fuzzy logic in their calculations. That, or they didn’t know the potheads I went to school with back in the 60s and 70s. To my way of thinking, living to your 40s in your mom’s basement, working as a blackmarket pot grower may have something to do with your heavy use of pot. Yes, I know not everybody does that, but the fact that it’s become a stereo-type at all says it happens enough to consider whether marijuana abuse is not a factor in encouraging the slacker lifestyle.
5. Cannabis can be a safe and useful sleep aid. And so can melatonin and melatonin doesn’t impair your judgment or potentially set fire to your bed when your lit joint falls from your unconscious fingers. Sleep aids can be obtained anywhere. If pot’s the only thing that works, then let doctor’s prescribe it in a less hazardous form.
6. Marijuana is used to alleviate a lot of medical ailments. Then let doctor’s prescribe it. If you check out the pro-pot legalization websites, you get a list of things marijuana “cures” that sounds like the spiel Dr. Terminus unloaded on the gullible citizens of Passamaquoddy in Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon”. I ain’t buyin’ it.
7. Many extremely successful people smoke marijuana. I’ve never found the “all the cool kids do it,” argument very convincing. As every Mama since Eve gave birth to her first son has said at one time or another, “If all the other kids jumped off a cliff, would you jump off too?” Mama had a point there.
8. Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol and it won’t work for pot. Here’s one of my favorite arguments. It starts out with a false assumption – that Prohibition failed. That’s everybody’s story and they’re sticking to it. The trouble is, it isn’t true (3). Prior to Prohibition, American families were in serious decline as a direct result of widespread alcoholism. During Prohibition wife beating and lack of family support decreased 82%. Drunkenness decreased 55.3%. Assault decreased 53.1%. Vagrancy decreased 52.8%. Disorderly conduct decreased 51.5%. Delinquency decreased 50.0%. Deaths due to cirrhosis of the liver decreased 50.0%. The number of inmates in jails and prisons decreased 75%. Many correctional institutions were closed entirely. General domestic complaints decreased by two-thirds. County hospital death rates reached an historic low. Despite very determined bootleggers, alcohol became almost unavailable. Prostitution decreased. The national crime rate (excluding Chicago) declined 38%. Even in Chicago, the crime rate declined by 25% in spite of Al Capone and his murderous rivals. Savings accounts tripled. Real estate values increased dramatically, due to home improvements. Families became better clothed. Attendence at churches and schools became more regular. Factory job attendance and productivity greatly increased. And, significantly, demand for services at welfare missions decreased by half. So the claim that making a substance like alcohol and pot illegal increases crime or just makes people want these drugs more, just doesn’t hold true statistically. (5)
9. Pot can’t hurt you. The claim that pot is harmless is dangerous and false. For one thing, nothing that alters your brain’s ability to reason can be said to be without risk. It’s interesting that the very people who describe pot as harmless and beneficial also refer to smoking a lot of pot as being “wasted”. Like alcohol, pot depresses the brains ability to think clearly. It’s attractive to people with anxiety disorders because it slows down rapid uncontrolled thoughts in some people. Note I said “some”. Recent evidence shows that early pot use can, in fact, trigger early onset of mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar in young people. Bipolar usually doesn’t kick in until the late 20s or 30s in those with the genetic propensity for the disease. In my own family, a rebellious son decided to smoke pot in his freshman year of high school as a way to show his independence by doing something all the other kids were doing. His bipolar kicked in hard during his junior and senior year and by the end of his first year in college I got a call to come and get him. I picked him up from his dorm room where he’d been huddled in bed in a fetal position for two weeks. We tried for 15 years to talk him into giving up pot and working with a doctor, but he didn’t like “taking drugs”. Pot made him feel good. He lost at least two jobs that I know of because of his pot use. I fired him from one of them. I had no choice. He was smoking joints and sleeping on the job. He felt so good using pot that in one of his bipolar psychotic episodes, he confessed to a crime he didn’t commit trying to manipulate the cops into doing something to his ex-girlfriend. It did not work. He was using pot at the time, which we believe may have impaired his judgment somewhat. He’s now serving a 35 year sentence without parole. So tell me again how marijuana is harmless.
10. Pot will provide increased taxes to the government – This delightful fantasy assumes that all these free taxes will magically be generated out of thin air and not be taken from taxpayers in addition to what taxes they are already paying. What this delusion doesn’t take into account is that increased pot use will also cost the government and our culture far more than any supposed benefit from taxation of pot use. Already Colorado has seen the costs of marijuana far exceed what the state takes in from taxes on weed (9). Taxation won’t slow down pot use at least that’s not what the numbers show (7). Making it legal, out here in the real world, tends to encourage marijuana use in younger and younger adolescents and children. Medical problems are already showing up that drain the economy in terms of worker productivity, healthcare and law enforcement. Police are having difficulty enforcing “driving while stoned” laws already due to the lack of a way to reliably test drivers who are under the influence of pot
11. Marijuana use will decrease once it’s legalized. Well, so far, THAT hasn’t happened in Holland or Portugal or even in Colorado despite rosy predictions to the contrary. In the Netherlands, pot use among adolescents has increased by 300% since legalization. Dutch citizens right now are seeking marijuana treatment at a much higher rate than nearly any other nation in Europe. And yes, Virginia, people do have to be treated for marijuana abuse and addiction.
If you buy the snake oil sales pitch from the pro pot legalization crowd, nothing bad can happen if we just go ahead legalize marijuana. It’s inevitable say both far right and far left advocates who have at last found a political issue they can come together on. Supposedly, if pot is legal across the land, we’ll all be mellow and happy and walking around in hemp clothing, driving hemp-powered cars and perfectly disease-free. If only we would just set poor innocent, much maligned Maryjane free.
So far it’s not working out that way out where the hemp-rubber meets the road. In the meantime, while the marijuana juggernaut rolls over our fair land, I think I’ll just keep my brain unaddled, thank you very much.
References:
1. https://www.medicalmarijuanablog.com/benefits/conditions-helped.html
2. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/marijuana-legalization_n_4151423.html
3. https://apocalypseobserved.blogspot.com/search?q=Prohibition
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470475/
5. http://nrfocus.org/latest_topics/ten-reasons-why-marijuana-should-not-be-legalized/
6. Meier, M.H. (2012). Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
7. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2010/RAND_WR768.pdf
8. http://pluggedin.focusonthefamily.com/the-costs-of-marijuana-legalization-a-colorado-snapshot/
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