CULTURAL LESSON - IT'S GOOD THAT EVERYTHING WENT TO POT

At the core of The Wackness is a love story between a spoiled
psychiatrist's stepdaughter and a pot dealer in New York City. That
the protagonist and his mentor deal and puff marijuana is never made
much of an issue and, why should it be? In 2008, popular culture just
said yes. From the screen to the art world, literature to the hippies
running the Amazing Race, everyone seemed to be getting irie, popular
culture providing a bailout the government couldn't endorse. Even the
Golden Globe Awards got high on amiable stoners. When James Franco
earned a best actor nomination for his role in Pineapple Express, it
was confirmed: Weed had officially become mainstream and Mary-Louise
Parker's pot dealer had turned the suburbs' clocks to 4:20. Of course,
there's a downside to all this toking. A B. C. study found that while
drinking and driving was down, drug use among motorists had gone up.
According to a December study by the Canadian Centre of Substance
Abuse, while 8.4% of nighttime drivers tested positive for alcohol,
10.4% proved positive for drugs. Maybe when the most popular U. S.
president-elect in memory admits he "inhaled frequently," and
everyone's favourite film Slumdog Millionaire is soundtracked by the
great M. I. A. song Paper Planes, there's a lingering effect when the
smoke clears. "I fly like paper, get high like planes/ if you catch me
at the border, I got visas in my name," goes the lyric to the M. I. A.
song, which was played ubiquitously on both urban and rock radio.

Apparently, music's most popular genres both agreed on broadcasting
from the smoking section. What was it about 2008 that made everybody
not wait to inhale? Against the collapse of industry, Lil Wayne
sipping cough syrup and Twilight's Kristen Stewart smoking hash
suddenly didn't seem so offensive. This year, the potheads were the
good guys. It was the bankers who were getting locked up.