MARIJUANA SHOULD NOT BE LEGALIZED; PARENTS ALREADY HAVE A HARD JOB

Pot, reefer, ganja. Whatever you call it, marijuana is an addictive
substance that should remain illegal.

Or at the very least, controlled. Some people simply shouldn’t smoke pot.
Just like some people shouldn’t drink alcohol. I don’t care what anyone
says, marijuana is a powerfully addictive drug. Hundreds of thousands of
Americans smoke pot daily. I’m pretty sure that right now there are dozens
of NMSU students skipping class, taking hits off bongs and pipes.

And sure they’re happy, content, stress-free—until the high wears off and
they realize they failed their math test and forgot to pay rent.

I’ve seen this scenario first-hand among several of my friends. The scenario
is simple: first, they feel depressed. So a friend or some random joe at a
party offers them a hit off their joint. The giggles arrive and the woes are
forgotten. Within a week, the pot smoker is hanging out on a daily basis
with other pot smokers, sitting on a smelly couch, playing video games,
eating 39 cent tacos and wasting his whole day away.

If he or she doesn’t get out of this rut soon, it turns into a lifestyle.
For many, it is similar to using a prescribed anti-depressant, but unlike
the Prozac user, a daily pot smoker operates under a listless, unproductive
fog.

You ask, so what? So what if these people waste their life away playing
another round of Tekken and passing a fatty around the coffee table? That’s
their mistake, right?

I don’t think it’s that simple. Like many problems, it begins with bad
parenting or an untreated mental problem.

My friends were smart enough to know that smoking pot has few benefits. They
started smoking to numb raw emotions. With no strong parental guidance or
emotional support, they turn to drugs for relief from the pain. That’s why
pot is so popular among distraught teen-agers—it’s a cheap and easy way to
feel better.

It doesn’t take long before they’re trapped. As soon as the high ends, the
pain comes back, along with other problems that have been stacking up since
the addiction began. At that point, if you’re 17, alone, confused and
possibly suicidal, the easiest choice is to smoke some more.

A 30-second public service announcement is not going to turn the addict
around. It will take jail or losing a job or having no place to live.
Sometimes even those aren’t reasons enough to make a person snap out of the
addiction. Often the user turns to other drugs. I’ve overheard countless
debates on if pot is really a "gateway" drug. With the drug users I’ve
known, it was again a repeatable pattern: first cigarettes, then alcohol,
next pot, then mushrooms or acid and lastly cocaine or speed—to reverse the
sluggish effects of the prior drugs. Luckily, no one I’ve known turned to
heroin, which is often the last illegal drug a user tries. But marijuana was
always the first—their gateway. If a person only uses alcohol and doesn’t
venture into drugs, they usually don’t get help until they hit
"rock-bottom." They either drink themselves to death or hopefully, quit
altogether—by no means an easy decision.

It’s no different with pot. My friends experimented with other drugs but pot
was by far their drug of choice. One ended up in jail, homeless, rejected by
his friends and by me. The other lost a job, scared away many of his friends
and quit school. If pot were legal, it would be incredibly easy for them to
keep throwing their life away.

Yet the fear of jail is enough to keep them on the right track, for now.
Although I feel that it’s the duty of the parent to raise strong, healthy
and responsible children, I don’t think Americans should make the burden of
parenting any more difficult by legalizing marijuana.