…Ronald Reagan smokes it, Nancy Reagan does it, why can’t we, why can’t we?Ah, childhood. That time of innocence, when kids are a blank slate and free of all of the baggage of adulthood. Except, of course, for the fact that this is *ahem* bullshit. I learned the song above (sung to the tune of “Are You Sleeping”) before George H.W. Bush was in office, which means I was still in elementary school. This was before the internet, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t learn it from my teachers, my mom and dad, or the older siblings I didn’t have.So, with that in mind, I think it’s time for a nice long ramble about pot. I think it’s worth stating upfront here that I do not currently use any illegal substances, simply because I don’t enjoy it anymore. I’m a mom, I’ve got too much to lose if I got caught. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have strong views about the whole “Better Living through Pharmaceuticals” thing.
Carl Sagan, Hippy Dippy Scientist Extraordinaire, said it best in his essay “Mr. X”:
“the illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.”
Now, I’m not saying that it’s impossible to live in peace and harmony without tinkering with the brain. But maybe there’s something to this? It’s simply true that some people are better equipped by nature to deal with life than others (see also: bipolar disorders and other genetic or other mishaps that lead to issues with coping), and it’s also true that the variety of experiences we grow up with and struggle to deal with as adolescents and adults can be a bit damaging. Some more so than others.
So we look for a means of escape. It’s totally natural, human instinct. Some people do it with books or video games, other people do it with fast food and television. Some people do it with drugs. Intoxication of one form or another has been a part of human history for thousands of years, in cultures all around the planet. From psychedelic vision quests to the workers who built the pyramids and took their payment in the form of beer, we’ve been using drugs for a very long time (some cultures more successfully than others). I think it’s easy to forget that our nation was founded by people who, by and large, drank much, much more than what would be considered acceptable social drinking today. As Benjamin Franklin put it so succinctly, “Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy.” Still, actual binge drinking, the sort that resulted in people being unable to get themselves home or say and do things that would horrify them in the morning if they could actually remember them, was fairly rare and certainly not socially acceptable.
I think whether or not drug use or even drug abuse is tolerated in the public eye or not has much more to do with the likelihood that people will develop dangerous addictions than the addictive qualities of the drug itself. I may be alone in this one, but I also think that addiction itself is only a health problem if the cons outweigh the pros in an objective analysis. Conflate the two (i.e., all drug use is drug abuse, use it once and you will become addicted/a criminal/a bad person/a failure), and we’re setting ourselves up to fail. The teenager who sneaks a beer and drinks it in the garage just to see what all the billboards are about (and, perhaps, is mildly disappointed when girls in bikinis don’t magically appear) becomes “a drinker”. If that same teenager thinks that his parents are likely to ground him if they ever find out that he snuck a beer, he is likely to have his second, or third, or three-hundred-and-first beer in secret as well. The same goes for the stoner, the benzo addict, or the World of Warcraft junkie who hasn’t seen daylight in weeks.
How can you look at something objectively if it’s not out in the open?
