About Time

I just read that the U.S. attorney general is about to advocate changing the national drug law regarding marijuana, putting its regulation on basically the same par as booze and cigarettes.

I was in my late teens when I took my first puff of marijuana – a little over 50 years ago..

Back then, it wasn’t easy to score in my small Midwestern town. It was the late 1960s, and marijuana was looked down upon by everyone except the young redneck hippies I hung out with.

Cops, especially. 

Imbibing in marijuana (let’s say pot from here on, because it’s easier to type – although I don't know how it got that nickname) was a very serious thing. My friends and I would go into total panic mode if we thought “The Man '' might be following our vehicle and about to turn on those flashing lights.

The use of pot in America goes back to the 1930s – possibly earlier – when mostly black musicians would get high on it and make some very beautiful music. Later – in the early 60s – white kids started to turn onto pot as they began to see the hypocrisy in the nation’s drug laws.

It was a time of questioning authority, protesting the war in Vietnam and turning away from the cigarettes and booze previous generations thought was cool.

Of course, that didn’t sit well with the nicotine and alcohol industries, who lobbied to keep pot a drug in the same enforcement category as heroin – which it has remained to this day.

And often with the same overly punitive prison sentences – sometimes for even the smallest amounts – in some of the nation’s most conservative states.

Young people were going to jail – even prison – for using a drug that we now regard as far less dangerous than cigarettes or alcohol – both of which we know can ruin and shorten lives.

But my oh my – how far we’ve come in the last 50 years! 

Since the legalization of pot about a decade or so ago in my home state of Colorado and some other pioneer states, there are now more states that have made pot legal – either for medical or recreational use or both – than the number of states that have not.

And that pro-legalization number just keeps growing.

A recent poll on pot use showed nearly 90 percent of adults surveyed saying it should be legalized. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/03/26/most-americans-favor-legalizing-marijuana-for-medical-recreational-use/

In Colorado – just before legalization – pot opponents said it would drastically increase the number of vehicle accidents, cause kids to drop out of school and destroy the very fabric of our society.

None of that happened.

And the states that have legalized it have benefitted immensely from the taxes collected on its sale. 

While cigarettes and alcohol kill tens of thousands of people in this country every year, I have yet to see a substantiated instance of ONE person dying from smoking pot.

The chemicals in pot have been shown to have many healthful effects in treating a number of human afflictions. It makes me wonder how much farther along we would be with the benefits of medical marijuana if we’d taken a more realistic look at it decades ago.

That’s water under the bridge, as they say, but it’s mind-blowing to me how much human misery and personal reputation damage has occurred because of America’s hypocritical double standard regarding pot vs. smokes and booze.

Look: I’m not saying everyone should smoke pot. People should have the right to make up their own minds about it.

And now it appears more people will have that right.

It’s about time.