Law & Politics

One of my personal crusades is to bring to light inconsistencies, misconceptions, and outright fiction regarding marijuana. This bit of “truthiness” (to borrow from Master Colbert) comes to us from the people over at Marijuana Anonymous. They ask (then answer) the following question:

“Who is a marijuana addict?

We who are marijuana addicts know the answer to this question. Marijuana controls our lives! We lose interest in all else; our dreams go up in smoke. Ours is a progressive illness often leading us to addictions to other drugs, including alcohol. Our lives, our thinking, and our desires center around marijuana – scoring it, dealing it, and finding ways to stay high.”

Title: The Truthiness of Marijuana Anonymous, Source: http://sundayresources.net/neil/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/normal_truthiness1.jpg

Truthfully, that statement sounds like it was written by Kevin Sabet or at least someone who has never smoked weed. “Our dreams go up in smoke”? What kind of true drug addict writes in puns? I have been around marijuana and its users for a long time and I honestly have yet to see anyone who has had their life ruined by weed. Sure, there are people who make bad choices and also happen to be potheads. But I still have a hard time believing in “marijuana addiction” in the truest sense of the phrase.

If you have been alive in the last 40 years (at least) no doubt you have heard the endless loop of specious propaganda stating that marijuana is a gateway drug. In the Marijuana Anonymous verbiage they call it “a progressive illness often leading us to addictions to other drugs, including alcohol” but they are basically just reiterating the tired old buzzphrase of cannabis = gateway drug.

By the way, I think the real danger/potential for weed to lead to harder drugs lies in the way the federal government schedules cannabis as a substance. The scenario plays like this: Kid smokes weed and thinks “hey, this isn’t even close to as bad as I have been told it is my whole life.” Then he/she looks at the hierarchy of the drug schedules and sees that pot (with which they have just had a safe and positive experience) is listed in the same category as heroin, LSD, ecstasy, peyote; and is, in fact, seen as more dangerous (according to the schedules) than cocaine, meth, Oxycontin, Demerol and Dilaudid. The kid then thinks “well, I just smoked some weed and all that BS they told me wasn’t true, so I think I’ll try [insert hard drug here] because I think they are lying again.”

See, with a lot of substances on the aforementioned schedules, one use is highly addictive, one use can kill you. I believe it is horribly dangerous and irresponsible to include marijuana on the same lists as legitimately deadly drugs. Just one more example of why lies and draconian, reactionary legislation regarding cannabis effectively doom more people than they “save.”

Title: The Truthiness of Marijuana Anonymous, Source: http://web-images.chacha.com/images/do-you-know-weed-fact-from-myth-may-25-2012-1-600x600.jpg

I’ve got news for you: if you consider yourself “addicted” to marijuana, you likely just have an addictive personality and you need to be cautious with anything you ingest (caffeine, sugar, soap operas). I grew weary of the “blame marijuana” game that people play when they just don’t want to take responsibility for their circumstances. I smoke a ton of weed and let me tell you, a great deal other things are more important to me than scoring my bag of grass. I smoke more than a lot of people and I have never once allowed it to become an excuse for my situation. If I spent my rent money on weed instead of rent, that was just a dumbass choice made by an undisciplined mind. It’s not weed’s fault.

Marijuana doesn’t get into your body and mind like cocaine or heroin; it doesn’t rewire your neural pathways and actually change your perceptions about right/wrong or what’s important. (Okay, to be fair sometimes getting stoned does help you release unimportant drama/stress from your life; so, in that respect, it does alter your perception, but in very minor and positive ways just like excersise or meditation can alter your brain chemistry and help you feel better).

We’ve all heard the horror stories bandied about by DARE commercials and the DEA’s PR department, but how many of you out there really, honestly have known or seen anyone who’s shitty plight can be directly blamed on cannabis? Snort a line of coke and your body/brain are immediately changed into a coke-seeking machine. The same can be said of many of these drugs that are treated as an equal or lesser threat than marijuana. I’ll agree that cannabis can be habit forming, just like a morning cup of coffee (although the withdrawl symptoms from cannabis are even milder than caffeine). You can get used to having that little smoke before work or whatever, but if you go without it for a few days, you’re not ripping your hair out, screaming at coworkers, hitting your kids or stealing from your parents to “feed” the habit.

To put marijuana in the same boat as hard drugs actually does a grave disservice to those who suffer with real, detrimental addictions. I am again reminded of the scene from Half Baked where Dave Chappelle’s character is at a narc-anon meeting, talking about his marijuana addiction. He goes on for a bit before the group realizes he’s talking about weed. Then a serious drug addict (played marvelously by Bob Saget) stands up and says (I’m paraphrasing here), “Weed? You’re here for weed? Have you ever sucked d#$k for weed?!?” As funny as that scene is, it illustrates my point. It would be like an affluent white kid going to Compton and talking to a bunch of the local residents about the struggles he’s had to overcome. By trying to put cannabis on par with any of these harder drugs (including alcohol) you trivialize legitimate addictions.

Look, I do not begrudge anyone who is making a choice to better their lives. If you genuinely feel that cannabis is a problem for you, I whole-heartedly support you on your journey to a balanced life. I really do. I have known people who have struggled with addiction and it is no joke or matter to be trivialized. I do feel, however, that far too often marijuana is used as a scapegoat, a pin on which to hang the blame for a bevy of poor choices. “Oh you mean I can just say marijuana made me steal my parents car and slap my wife? Shit. That’s waaay easier than saying it was my fault.” There is no physiological addiction to be found with marijuana and I really believe it needs to be analyzed against itself with empirical, scientifically backed data. You don’t judge a new spaghetti sauce by the same criteria that you would judge a new kind of industrial adhesive.

Marijuana doesn’t belong in the same bucket as hard drugs and until it is removed from that grouping, I fear that we will continue to encounter similarly biased, incomplete, and “truthy” information.