MARIJUANA SHOULD BE LEGAL, AND LEFT ALONE

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 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.

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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 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 grandfather-hood, 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.

Marijuana smoking is, if anything, more commonplace today than when I
was a wannabe hippie 40 years ago. My sons, now grown, tell me it was
easier for them to get pot in high school 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. Twenty-seven years after a special
commission formed by Congress and President 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. 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 the majority of those possession busts
were young black and Latino men, even though surveys show 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 it 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 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.