TABLE MANNERS AND MARIJUANA

Two interesting issues surfaced last week. The first is the
announcement of the US Food and Drug Administration that, contrary to
scientific research, marijuana has no medicinal value.

Second is the case of seven-year-old Luc Cagadoc who has been
regularly disciplined in the Canadian school he attends for eating
with a spoon and fork.

Cagadoc's plight hit the Philippine online community after The
Chronicle (Montreal, Canada) published a story on April 19. In a
country where the "normal" practice is to eat with one hand using the
fork, the little boy, born of Filipino parents, uses his spoon and
fork as most of us do-he pushes his food into his spoon with the fork,
lifts the spoon to his mouth and eats his food. Every time he did this
the lunch monitor would send him to another table where he ate alone.

After getting punished more than 10 times, he refused to eat his lunch
at home because "My teacher is telling me that eating with a spoon and
fork is yucky and disgusting." That was when his mother found out
about the punishments in school. She has filed a complaint with the
Commission Scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys. The school principal
described the boy's table manners as "eating like a pig."

Let's leave Cagadoc's story for a bit and shift to the marijuana
report from The New York Times. For better context, let me reproduce a
paragraph from my Web log entry.

"In 1996, the Compassionate Use Act became a law in the U.S. allowing
seriously ill persons to obtain and use marijuana.

In 2003, there was a court decision allowing intrastate,
non-commercial cultivation of marijuana for personal consumption based
on a physician's recommendations and other specified
conditions..."

The medicinal use of marijuana has been declared legal in 11 states
but the Drug Enforcement Agency has been resisting the policy.

And there is a Supreme Court decision allowing the federal government
to arrest marijuana users, even those using it for medical reasons,
and even in states were its use is legal.

In the course of discussion in my Web log, I commented that "if the
objections are based on the 'diminished mental capacity' while under
the influence of marijuana, then alcoholic beverages should be banned
too because they have the same effects." Mother and blogger Noemi
agreed and commented that "It's just that drinking is a more socially
acceptable behavior than smoking pot."

"Socially acceptable behavior" refers to norms.

And that, I think, is what is at the bottom of both Cagadoc's
situation and the furor over the use of marijuana.

The debate has nothing to do with good or bad, right or
wrong.

It is simply about the unacceptability-the intolerance-for any
deviation from the norm.

It is easy to decide Cagadoc's situation based on the "Do as the
Romans do" adage.

Reader and fellow blogger Phisch (www.inthatnumber.com) commented,
"Won't many expect, say, someone Japanese to hold off on burping
loudly after a good dinner?

To them it's a very, very positive thing but for the rest of us, well,
you know, it's gross.

They can do it at home and carry on tradition but when they have to
mingle with everyone else, have a little respect." I agree, to a point.

If the deviation from the norm is disproportionately disruptive, then,
there may be good reason not to allow or tolerate it. But if the
deviation is harmless, i.e., it does not really affect anyone except
the actor as in the case of Cagadoc, punishing the behavior becomes
arbitrary.

It becomes synonymous with punishing a person for being
different.

And that is the height of bigotry.

The debate over the use of marijuana is likewise rooted in what is
"socially acceptable." It is similar to boys sporting long hair in
school. Long hair among boys is (still very much) associated with the
hippies of the '60s and the '70s. In fact, today, males who sport long
hair are easily branded either as artists, rockers or geeks (Hi, Chin
Wong), as though in the context of subcultures, long hair is normal
and acceptable. Disallowing boys to sport long hair in schools has
nothing to do with proof of diminished intellectual capacity or
unacceptable social skills.

Does wearing one's hair long automatically make a boy disruptive,
unruly, unmanageable and downright impossible? There is no relation.
It is not allowed simply because of its association with a culture
that "square" people brand as the height of deviance.

And deviance is the opposite of what is socially acceptable.

What is it about marijuana that is socially unacceptable? Consider the
act of smoking marijuana.

Smoking regular cigarettes, despite "warning from the surgeon
general," is not illegal.

Hence, the act of smoking itself cannot be what makes marijuana
objectionable. What is the effect of smoking marijuana on a person's
behavior?

Is it so different from the fuzzy feeling that alcohol gives us? Why
is "social drinking" acceptable but pot sessions are not? They are
both means for "unwinding," letting one's hair loose to stimulate
talks that rigid social convention does not often allow.

Except, perhaps, for recent findings on the beneficial effects of red
wine on the heart, alcohol has no medicinal or health benefits. Yet,
drinking alcohol is largely unregulated. In the Philippines, minors
have access to alcohol.

Sari-sari stores do not ask for IDs, do they? So what is it that makes
marijuana so objectionable and alcohol, acceptable? That it kills
brain cells?

Well, so does alcohol. And it kills the liver, too.

But let's treat the Great Marijuana Debate from another
angle.

Marijuana can be grown for free in just about any small patch of soil.
If home growing is allowed, and its consumption (smoking, brownies,
etc.) is legalized, it can easily replace beer and alcohol.

And that would kill businesses left and right.

But the more serious questions revolve around the medicinal benefits
of marijuana in cancer and AIDS patients.

Despite obvious progress in herbal medicine, it is still largely
unexplored territory compared to traditional medicine.

Manufacturers and organizations and agencies doing research on herbal
medicine do not have the resources to market herbal products the way
multinational drug companies do-wining and dining doctors, sending
them on pleasure trips... the works.

Is the resistance to the use of marijuana an illustration of fear that
it may jump-start the shift to cheap medical alternatives that will
shatter the control of multinational drug companies over the health
industry in countries all over the world?

Is it, therefore, so far-fetched to consider that alcohol and beer
makers, and drug companies, are simply using bigoted conservatives to
retain the upper hand in the Great Marijuana Debate? Sometimes what
appears to be moral and social debates are actually rooted in pure and
simple greed.