Oh For Fuck's Sake

Recently someone I know mentioned they had missed meeting a friend and were told by another friend that the first friend likely had failed to show up because she had become hooked on marijuana and had run out. I made a mild polite protest but inside my guts were screaming "BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BULLSHIT". All over this country and, indeed, the world people are being fed misinformation about marijuana and they believe it because it comes from sources they are programmed to trust... like the government... who (and this is noteable fact... go check it out) outlawed marijuana as a move against mexican immigrants in the early 20th century.

Here's a little truth (with citations of published studies) about marijuana.
Here's an article from earlier this year concerning some of the reasons the press and government have a vested interest in a continued prohibition (slightly less full of citations but still full of researchable claims).
Here's a history of how it became illegal. This story appears on an pro-legalization propaganda site but despite that it's actually true. There a show that runs semi-regularly on the History Channel and a similar show you might catch here and there on PBS that outlines this same story. It's all true.

In conclusion, you can believe whatever you want about marijuana. You succumb to the product of the racism, jingoism, and yellow journalism of 100 years ago. You could, and I recommend this path, take a few moments to consider that not everything you are told by the government and the media is true. This girl may have a douche bag loser boyfriend who sits around smoking pot all day. She might have the self esteem of a sexually confused frat boy's jerk sock. She might be trying to regulate depression or any number of treatable mental illnesses with marijuana, or maybe she's just plain stupid. No matter how you look at it, though, it's extremely unlikely that she was dragged down by an addiction to marijuana. You don't have to smoke it. Until it's legalized smoking pot is a risky behavior whether you agree or disagree with the information in the links above. On the other hand, don't look down on people who don't believe as you do. You would have to at least square, possibly cube, the number of people with an actual problem with marijuana to come up with the number of people with alcohol problems. Go look down at them. They're actually a danger to you. Hearst and Pulitzer never told you that did they?

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