The Point

MARIJUANA SHOULD BE LEGAL, AND LEFT ALONE

Long-ago pothead favors repealing the laws, but now regards reefer-
toking as not-such-a-good idea.

I knew when I saw my father sitting at the kitchen table that I was in trouble.

I was a teenager, returning home late from a night out with my
friends. I was high. As we did most nights, my friends and I had been
smoking pot. It was 1970. Nearly everyone I knew my age smoked pot.

My father was usually asleep long before I got home. I took a quick
inventory of my state of mind and concluded that so long as my
conversation with him was casual and brief there was a chance he
wouldn't notice that I was cockeyed stoned. One of the virtues of
pot, or so I thought then, was this ability to play it straight. Fear
was especially useful. It could straighten out your thinking in a hurry.

As was his style, he confronted me head-on.

"Mark, do you smoke?" he asked.

I could not lie to my father. Even to this day, I'm not sure why
exactly; I hope it was because I respected him and knew he did not lie to me.

"Yes," I told him, and then braced myself.

He was furious, but not about my marijuana use. He had not even
considered the possibility of an illicit drug. He was worried that I
was smoking cigarettes! I nearly swooned with relief.

I was not a cigarette smoker. They gave me a headache and left a
god-awful taste in my mouth. They were addictive and caused cancer.
No way. My father had been a heavy smoker in his youth, and he had
quit cold turkey when the first of the surgeon general's warnings had
come out. So he could not comprehend why one of his own sons would
even consider flirting with the habit.

I did not disabuse him. While I might not have been able to look my
father in the eye and lie, I was expert at withholding the complete
truth. I bore the cigarette scolding manfully, expressed agreement
and contrition, and gave the old man my word I would never smoke
another cigarette. I have kept that promise.

It took me a little longer to stop smoking dope. Having raised five
children of my own and entered upon grandfatherhood, I can report two
things: (1) I think we ought to repeal laws against marijuana
possession; (2) I no longer think smoking pot is a good idea.

Tomorrow, April 20, or 4/20, has become an unofficial national
holiday for lovers of weed. There are supposedly 420 chemical
elements in cannabis, or something like that. The reasons for 4/20
becoming the toker's special day are suitably confused, about as
certain as most trains of thought under the influence. The revelry
both celebrates the substance and protests its illegality. I'm with
them on the latter issue, not so much on the former.

Marijuana smoking is, if anything, more commonplace today than when I
was a wannabe hippie 40 years ago. My sons, now grown, tell me that
it was easier for them to get pot in high school in Chester County
than it was to get beer. Generations of Americans have grown up
getting high, long enough for everyone to know that all the old
horror stories about its use are ridiculously exaggerated. No one I
knew who smoked dope as a kid - and, as I said, just about everyone I
knew did - turned into a heroin or cocaine addict.

I do know some folks who became alcoholics, and a number of them are
no longer around. I believed then and I believe today that alcohol is
a far greater public health and safety threat than marijuana.
Tobacco, also legal, is an even greater curse.

Yet the war on weed rages on. Thirty-seven years after a special
commission formed by Congress and President Richard Nixon concluded
that punitive marijuana laws cause more social harm than the drug
itself, nearly half of the drug arrests in this country are for pot.
The numbers grow annually. More people were arrested for pot
possession in America last year than ever before in our history, more
than 800,000. In Pennsylvania, possession is a misdemeanor, and the
possible prison sentence goes from 30 days to a year, depending on
whether the amount is more or less than 30 grams. Although there are
horrific exceptions, most of these offenders, unless they were
involved in serious drug trafficking or some other illegal activity
when arrested, do not go to jail for simple possession. Still, what a
tremendous waste of money and manpower! One of the strongest
arguments against such misdemeanor drug laws is that they are
completely ineffective.

More than that, the prohibition of marijuana gives police an undue
amount of leverage over average citizens. When something as
widespread as pot possession is illegal, police can use it as an
excuse to harass whole classes of otherwise law-abiding citizens. It
should come as no surprise that the majority of those possession
busts were young black and Latino men, even though surveys show that
most of the marijuana users in this country are white.

I stopped smoking dope many years ago. I have always urged my
children not to use it, just as I have counseled them to avoid using
other drugs and getting drunk. The effects of pot use are more subtle
than drunkenness, which leads many to conclude that marijuana is a
less dangerous intoxicant than alcohol, but its very subtlety poses a
unique threat. Because you can go to class high, go to work high,
drive high, and otherwise function with apparent normality, it is
easier to abuse marijuana constantly than alcohol, and that
"normality" you feel isn't the truth. Marijuana doesn't make you out
of control. It just makes you stupid. And while I haven't surveyed
the most recent medical reports, I suspect the health effects of
inhaling pot smoke are likely to be at least as harmful as the
substance that so concerned my dad.

For me, as with most users, getting high was a symptom of boredom and
rebellion. Once I grew up and found work that I loved, competitive
work that demanded real effort and mental clarity, I realized that
the effects of getting high, the confusion and silliness, were a
disadvantage. When I had children, the responsibility I felt for them
weighed on me in a nice way, but also in a way that ruled out getting
high. Weed began to induce less joy than worry. What if, feeling
temporarily silly and indifferent, I failed my family in some way,
large or small?

I know I am not alone in this. These are the kinds of decisions
adults in our society make every day about their health, their
responsibilities, and their happiness. Lots of people don't agree
with me, including some of my friends. That may make them misguided,
in my view, but it certainly shouldn't make them criminal.