As 2012 ends and 2013 begins, I reflect back and think how the world has changed from just a year ago. Cannabis legalization is at the forefront of that change.

In my home state of Washington, we passed Initiative 502, which made up to an ounce of cannabis legal for recreational use. On December 6th, the day the initiative was put into place, there were dojah smokers everywhere; on the street, in their cars, in and on top of buildings. At the same time, cannabis drug chargers have been dropping like flies since the initiative passed, saving the state money and saving people from ridiculous punishments.

I’ve seen the changes in my own life. I was recently at a restaurant watching a UFC event, and between fights half the restaurant would clear out. I of course was one of them, walking to my car for a toke break, and as I scurried to my car from the restaurant, a simple nod and a wink from those doing the same thing let me know that they were on Team Cannabis too. If you were to look around that parking lot between fights, you’d see hotbox after hotbox.

Since I-502 has passed, everything is better. The grass is greener, the girls are prettier, hell, it hardly ever rains anymore.

Who am I kidding? This is the Pacific Northwest. It always rains.

So imagine my shock when I see this headline in a local newspaper…

Officials: Pot Legalization Brings Negatives

This was a main headline for the Columbian on December 20th, 2012, just two weeks after cannabis officially became legal. The Columbian, which is the largest newspaper here in Southwest Washington, reported on two twenty-minute speeches from Prevent! coalition member Sean Chavez and Clark County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Shane Gardner, made Wednesday the 19th at a meeting for the Rotary Club of Vancouver. This event took place at the same Red Lion hotel that shut down a pot farmers market weeks earlier.

Chavez and Gardner believe there should be concern about cannabis legalization, and here’s why:

• According to Chavez, increased access can lead to increased usage, which changes the social standards.
• Prevent! has already received reports of people unknowingly ingesting baked goodies cooked with cannabis.
• In some stores, Gardner explains, bongs are sold right next to gum, which could condition children to smoke at a young age.
• Chavez: “You cannot have a joint and not be high…You can have a drink and not be drunk.”
• In his years of experience undercover, Gardner hasn’t met a single hard drug user who “skipped marijuana”.

Since the Colombian points out that no pro-cannabis voices were invited to speak at the meeting, I’ll be the voice.

1. Increased access can lead to increased usage, which will change social standards.

In the words of the great Lebron James — it’s about damn time.

Social standards need to be changed. Right now the social standard is men getting drunk and being physically abusive towards their girlfriends, or drunk drivers causing fatal car accidents. Other social standards are dying of lung cancer from cigarettes, overdosing on prescription pills, and getting locked in a cage for growing a plant.

Let’s focus on alcohol specifically. Cannabis and alcohol are substitutes for each other, so when a population increases its use of cannabis, that same population decreases its use of alcohol, and vice versa. Alcohol makes a lot of people more aggressive and confrontational. People under the influence of alcohol have delayed reflexes, but they drive faster and make riskier decisions, creating a dangerous combination on the road. Compare that to cannabis, which mellows out almost everyone. Although people still believe driving high is dangerous like driving drunk, studies have shown that THC’s adverse effects on driving performance are very small, and that cannabis users recognize the effects and adjust their driving accordingly. If more people smoked cannabis and less people drank alcohol, we’d actually be safer.

So when Mr. Chavez argues against increased usage and changing the social standards, what exactly is he arguing for?

2. People are intentionally cooking with cannabis and surprising their friends and co-workers. These unsuspecting people don’t know how to handle being high.

Let me just say, if you’re bringing cannabis edibles into the office for your co-workers, you’re probably a bad mother fucker, but you’re not very smart. If you’re eating cannabis goods and don’t recognize that there is cannabis in them, you’re not very bright either, or the person who made them gave you some shit edibles.

What I suspect is that some people got reckless once legalization passed. They wanted to give the good herb to everyone they could, even those who didn’t want it or weren’t expecting it. I can relate to that. There are people I know who I believe would benefit, yet they refuse to try it, usually because they’re scared and un-informed. This happens to a lot of people. So what the hell, give them a brownie and see how they react, right?

That would be nicer gesture if they didn’t have to go operate a forklift in five minutes.

But what Chavez and the people at Prevent! should really be concerned with is informing the population about the dangers of unknowingly ingesting cannabis.

This isn’t a concern of mine because there are no dangers to eating cannabis. You don’t eat cannabis and get sick. You don’t die. You don’t jump off buildings thinking you can fly. Unknowingly ingesting cannabis could catch someone off guard and cause them to lose balance mentally, mainly if they’re uninformed and inexperienced. Still, eating cannabis and getting high from it is not bad for you, and I hope the people at Prevent! are telling callers this, although I doubt they are.

There is a lesson to be learned here. Don’t give people edibles without them knowing, especially in the workplace. Unless they’re you’re friend and in a safe, welcoming environment. Then it’s OK.

3. Cannabis and paraphernalia can be sold in any store, making it more common for young children to become aware of smoking.

Has Gardner walked into a gas station? Like ever?

Behind the counter you will find an assortment of tobacco products that anyone can purchase after reaching the age of 18, and kids see it all their lives. In the back of the stores, alcohol coolers reign supreme, and those you can have at 21.

Cigarettes kill over 400,000 people in the United States every single year. Think about that. Over a five-year period, cigarettes will kill over 2 million Americans. Alcohol, meanwhile, kills over 100,000 people in the United States every year.

In over 10,000 years of recorded use, cannabis has never killed anybody. Ever.

Today children are more aware than they’ve ever been in the history of humanity. They’re already aware of smoking — they’re aware of anything they want to be. With the internet, anyone can get any information they want at the click of a button. They’re already aware that cannabis isn’t harmful, while legal drugs like cigarettes, alcohol, and prescription pills will kill them. How aware are you if you can’t see that?

4. “You cannot have a joint and not be high…you can have a drink and not be drunk.”

Let’s take a trip down memory lane.

I was at a friends apartment not too long after I first became a weedist, and this ended up being one of the first times I smoked and went out in public. I was worried before leaving the house that the bouncer wouldn’t let me in — I’d been removed from that establishment a couple times for being drunk — because I so obviously looked and smelled high.

“They’re not gonna let me in,” I said. ” I’m too high.”

My good friend turned to me and posed the same question I would pose to Mr. Chavez.

Since when is high being a bad thing?

It isn’t. That doesn’t mean that being high is so amazing that everyone will like it or that it’s for everyone, it just means that nothing bad is going to come from it. The most common response I get from people who don’t enjoy cannabis is that they don’t want to get high because it makes them paranoid, and I tend to think those people don’t have their shit together.

Here’s another trip down memory lane.

There was one time I got extremely paranoid from smoking cannabis. Only one. It was weeks after a serious car crash I was involved in. I smoked normally as I would any time, but after I smoked I saw visions of myself dying in a car crash. It replayed over and over in my mind. Was this paranoia? Absolutely, but I was paranoid because I was battling feelings I had within myself. I had post traumatic stress from the accident, and although living through those visions of dying in a car crash wasn’t easy, it was obvious that I was nervous about driving again. That led me to change my driving habits. My paranoia pointed a big red arrow right at an issue I had and forced me to address it. Paranoia might not be fun, but it is necessary. Cannabis made me face myself.

So when people tell me cannabis made them paranoid, what I hear is, “I  had some shit in my life that I needed to deal with, but it made me uncomfortable.”

5. No one who does hard drugs skipped marijuana.

Right, because someone who’s crazy enough to do meth is really going to think cannabis is the risk they just can’t bear to take.

Cannabis doesn’t have a gateway effect, but prohibition does. It forces cannabis into the market of illegal drugs, and if you’re not in one of the lucky states you can’t acquire it unless you go through someone who’s willing to break the law. If someone is willing to sell cannabis illegally, they’re probably willing to sell cocaine, heroin, and meth too. Legalizing cannabis, getting it into the stores and out of the hands of drug dealers, is actually going to decrease the gateway effect.

While I don’t agree with them, I think it is a great thing that Mr. Chavez and Sgt. Gardner are doing in the community. They’re out there trying to educate people and prepare them to deal with the changes in state policy. That is something I’d like to see more of, but obviously I find their execution and their ideology both extremely flawed.

I-502 passed, which shows me people are starting to weave through misinformation until they find the truth about cannabis legalization. Once you know the truth, you know there are no negatives.