Whoa. After my last column (“Americans Are Already Too Distracted
… and Now We’re Talking About Legalizing Pot?!), I got lots of
letters. Weekly readers be a pot-smokin’ bunch.
One of them even called me a “chemical bigot,” which is like calling
someone a “political coffee table,” but semantics aside, let me make
something perfectly clear: Beyond annoyance, I don’t give two shits if
adults smoke pot. They can stick joints up their bums and light them up
with their farts, and I’m, like, totally down with that. I’d laugh like
hell if I saw it on YouTube.
Pot-smokers can be artists, poets, house painters, whatever they
want to be. They should have the freedom to work in head shops and
flower shops and even in the front offices of alternative-weekly
newspapers, though they should probably stay out of the back, with all
that pesky dangerous machinery. In addition, I’d appreciate them
staying out of air-traffic control towers, nuclear power plants, the
cabs of semis barreling down Interstate 10 at 80 mph, and hospital
operating rooms. THC has a nasty tendency to build up and stick around
in fatty body tissues (like the brain).
What I’m against is the legalization of pot for anything other than
genuine medical use. Not because I’m worried about adults; I’ve got
loads of friends who smoke the stuff and know well enough the
difference between a bong full of cannabis and a syringe full of
heroin. But the distinction isn’t so clear for teenagers. The refusal
to recognize this fact is just another disturbing aspect of the intense
narcissism and immaturity of popular culture, which, in case anybody’s
missed it, is the only culture we’ve got left in this country.
It’s a fact of the modern world that most people who have kids have
to work to house, feed and educate them. This results in children
relying on their own devices a lot of the time. Most of those devices
are electronic, with a value that’s neutral at best and soul-destroying
at worst, including crap rife with violence, pornography,
rage—both justified and not—nihilism and despair. There’s
also a lot of funny stuff—even I like South Park sometimes—but it’s too friggin’ jaded for developing
sensibilities unable to discern what to keep and what to throw out.
Young minds need guidance, and very few get that guidance these days.
In this cauldron of cultural and material trash, there comes a time in
which children begin to despair.
The availability of drugs soothes this despair, and whether it’s
pot, pills or black-tar heroin makes little difference to a desperate
kid. And the only thing standing between many troubled adolescents and
the wholesale cultural acceptance of yet another layer of poison is the
criminal-justice system: The fact that drugs are illegal is the one
thing that keeps many kids from doing them. Interestingly enough, the
justice system is also one of the few things that helps them once they
do.
The corollary of parents having too little time for their kids is
denial. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard well-meaning
parents say they chose not to immunize their teenage daughters against
HPV—a sexually transmitted virus that can cause
cancer—because doing so implies the daughters are, or soon will
be, sexually active. It’s much easier to slather on a layer of outdated
and illusory morality.
The same kind of reasoning comes into play with drug use. The kid
comes home smelling like Cheech and Chong’s basement, and his parents
don’t pick up on it, not because they’ve lost their sense of smell, but
because “my kid would never do that.” I’ve sat through drug-treatment
sessions in which a kid has been on the nod for days from black-tar
heroin, and his parents explained it away as normal teenage
fatigue.
It’s not until said kid is arrested and forced into drug treatment
that his parents are forced to face facts. The truth is that for many
poor families, the only way to crack the mental-health/substance-abuse
systems is through a court order. As a parent advocate for a local
drug-treatment facility, I’ve sat through more than 100 sessions in
which the only reason the kids and their parents are there and on the
same page is that the criminal-justice system forced them there.
Am I advocating a “nanny” state? You bet your ass I am. Until
someone comes up with something better, it’s all we’ve got.
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.
This is a false argument, obviously marijuana could be legalized for adults while remaining illegal for children.
The real argument is whether such legalization would reduce the desire of kids to experiment with it, reduce their access to it, and reduce their exposure to hard-core criminality while seeking it.
As long as it is disproportionately black, latino and asian kids getting the punishment while white kids get to walk or go to “rehab” with a slap on the wrist while drugs are plentiful and widely available and cheap, then what you are proposing is a continued racist system that punishes some terribly, putting them on the other side of the law for good. If the author really favors this kind of injustice, then status quo it is. If you want social justice, medical and legal rationality, then legalize all drugs and sell them at the store like booze, which kills more people than the illegals combined.
I appreciate your passion, Catherine, but you are not very well informed about cannabis. It is not poison, it is a virtually non-toxic herb. Evidence of use does remain in the body fat for days or weeks, but those remnants are not producing any mood altering effect. Black tar heroin and pot do not go hand in hand…etc.
Your arguments are, ironically, paranoid. Geez, Catherine, do a little research.
Has she called anyone else an “Addict?”
O’Sullivan IS a “Chemical Bigot.” It is a term taken from an article you can find here… http://www.chemicalbigotry.org/blog/mary_j…
In my own opinion, the war on (some) drugs is a form of apartheid (meaning, the state of being seperate), of strict segregation and discrimination against almost everything except alcohol, etc. There are also far worse things for our youth, like American Football, with its “brain-slap” and high rate of spinal injuries, knee injuries, concussions, etc. If we were really worried about our youth, American Football would be banned, too.
I have attempted to discuss some facts/figures and my own personal story with illness and cannabis with O’Sullivan…in response to me, she says simply, that I am an “Addict.” She is rude and ignorant.
In places like New Mexico, where there are medical marijuana laws…you may only qualify for this medicine if you have one of five diseases…Cancer is one, and the other four are just as extreme. Even if you are a card-carrying medical user, this does not protect you from failing a pee-test at your job or having your home, car, etc. possessed by the DEA, FBI, ATF, etc. If you are a card carrying member, your UPS, Postal Delivery person, Electric Meter reader person, Gas meter reader person, and any and all neighbors potentially are a threat to your safety if they report a flower pot growing a stigmatized plant in it somewhere on your property. Their ignorance and fear leads to YOUR arrest…guilty until proven innocent…your door can be kicked in…assault rifles aimed at your face, wrists cuffed, countless legal fees later, you are free with PTSD., even though, your doctor signed your prescription…it is still Guilty till proven innocent.
O’Sullivan MUST at LEAST read the definition of a “Bigot.”
Both brain and lung tumors are reduced from a particular chemical in marijuana- the part that gets you high. That’s right, the THC. Heaven forbid we should prevent children from getting a head start at combating exposure to toxins. Why share a toke in a controlled environment when they can have that same sense of adventure and excitement of getting away with doing something “bad”? After all, why should they get the good stuff you smoke at home?