HALF-BAKED

Anti-Marijuana Messages Are Silenced by Youth's Real-Life Experiences

A house lost amid Elk Grove's urban sprawl offers more than meets the
eye. The gray-beige paneling and brick facade are neat, if not a bit
weather beaten. A cheery ceramic disc hanging by the front door
proudly proclaims the last name of the homeowners. Inside the
doorway, beyond the painted portrait of a wedded couple and past the
big-screen television is a sliding-glass door, through which one is
led to a pot smoker's paradise.

An enclosed outdoor canopy conceals various smoking paraphernalia,
lighters and lawn chairs. Welcome to the family weed shack.

While Don's parents own the house, he and his friend Nick are free to
toke there so long as they remain inside the weed shack. They are not
the only household heads: Don's mother also indulges, a secret her
son discovered years earlier when he walked in on her one day burning
a fatty. Don had never noticed anything different with her; she was
always just like all the other moms.

In fact, Don and Nick - - whose last names we've withheld - say they
were given their first tastes of marijuana by their respective
mothers, although both were quick to add the choice to use was made
of their own free will.

Such permissive attitudes would seem to run counter to conventional
parental wisdom - it would have even during those heady years
immediately prior to Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, when
everyone and their, well, mother seemed to be getting high. Nick and
Don are also products of elementary school anti-drug campaigns that
beat into kids the notion that marijuana is evil, that to be a truly
solid citizen one must live drug-free - wacky tobacky included.

Explaining the ills of pot is fine with Lisa Mondiel. She's with the
California Coalition for Youth, which maintains that marijuana's
properties make it a mind-altering drug and - worse - a potential
"gateway drug" to harder substances.

Numbers back up the coalition's contention: 62 percent of adults over
the age of 26 who began smoking marijuana before the age of 15
admitted to cocaine use during their lifetime, while 9 percent
reported heroin use, according to an Office of National Drug Policy
study. Those who initiate use of marijuana at any age are more likely
to use cocaine and heroin and become dependent on drugs, ONDP found.

Don and Nick disagree that marijuana is a gateway drug, although they
admit that during their three-year pot-smoking career, they've taken
Ecstasy, snorted cocaine and eaten magic mushrooms. They certainly
dispute the notion that they're addicted to pot.

"We don't need to smoke," Don says firmly. "When I don't smoke for a
while, it just comes up in my head, 'I haven't smoked weed for a
while. Bummer.' But it's not like I have to get high immediately.
It's one of those things that doesn't have withdrawals. You don't get
depressed."

They also adamantly distance themselves from stereotypical "potheads."

"People just need to come home and take two hours out of the day,
whether it's to meditate or run or just smoke pot," Don says. "For
us, smoking pot is easier than running a mile."

Nick adds that they usually engage in some activity after burning
one, as opposed to potheads who sit around all day and, well, just
smoke pot for hours on end, with brief interruptions to crash and
consume munchies.

"That is their life. They have no other way to entertain themselves,
I suppose," Nick says. "Then there are those who use marijuana as a
tool, to smoke and do other things afterward. It's pretty much just
like smoking a cigarette."

The nonchalant attitude toward marijuana extends to young people who
don't even partake. Take 20-year-old Adam, who consented to an
interview as long as his first name was changed and his last name was not used.

Adam speaks highly of his housemate. Laid back and easy going, Adam's
housemate works two jobs, has a girlfriend, owns two trucks and keeps
up with his Sacramento City College schoolwork. For the most part,
they appear like two regular college chums roughing it on their own
in their quiet south Sacramento neighborhood.

There is one slight twist to their tale of congeniality, however:
Adam's housemate smokes marijuana. Adam does not.

"Living with someone who smokes marijuana is pretty much just like
living with any other Californian," Adam says. "I don't live in a
drug den. I live in a house. I have a roommate who smokes pot. It's
pretty much just two guys living without their moms."

The neighbors have never complained. The cops have never busted down
- - let alone knocked on - the front door. The house does reek of
marijuana while Adam's housemate smokes, but Adam doesn't really mind
so long as the fans are on and an air freshener is handy.

He simply shrugs at negative connotations directed at potheads.

"Someone who is drunk is more likely to break something than someone
who is high," he says with a laugh. "He just sits on the couch and
watches some TV. Sometimes he vacuums. Someone who is drunk will
puke. I've never seen or heard of anyone who has thrown up from
smoking too much marijuana."

Theirs is a story that could just as easily be told from the opposite
perspective, from the stoner with the same no-BFD attitude sharing
what it is like living with someone straight (in terms of indulgence,
not sexuality). For Adam's part, living with a pothead has made him
neither a proponent nor opponent of the substance.

"It's something that can be abused, but it's not heroin or something
like that," he says. "I have a job, I go to work. He has a job, he
goes to work. It doesn't affect your day-to-day life all that much.
Everyone has a hobby or a vice."

Pot smoking is one popular hobby. The ONDP conducted a poll that
showed roughly 32 percent of graduating high-school seniors in 2006
were smoking - or had at least tried to smoke - marijuana during the
past year. That would indicate there are tens of thousands of young
users in the Central Valley, with many more who will join their
numbers once they figure out how to score.

So the anti-drug dogma is not sticking with the younger generation,
especially among those like our head cases who have experienced
first-hand evidence to the contrary.

Looking back at their earlier days of innocent education about drug
usage, Don and Nick explained that marijuana never really was given
much attention except that it was "bad." Both believe if kids
actually were told the truth about marijuana rather than just that
it's bad, there would be fewer questions that need to be answered by
self-experimentation.

Ironically, Mondiel sees eye to red eye with Don and Nick. As the
program director of the youth hotline, she often gets calls from
parents who panic about their child's newfound friend Mary Jane, and
from friends of teens who are worried about their friend's marijuana
usage. The main cause for concern is marijuana's reputation for being
"a bad drug."

"Kids need to know all of this information about marijuana," Mondiel
says. "You can't just tell them not to smoke just because it's 'bad.'
And I don't even want to say it's bad, but just that there needs to
be more information so kids know exactly what kind of substance marijuana is."

Much to the contrary of the push to demonize marijuana, Mondiel
suggests that anti-substance-use organizations would be better served
focusing on alcohol abuse.

Now it's Don in agreement.

"I tried driving home drunk once; it was one of the most horrible
fucking experiences in my life," he says. "It was only around the
corner, maybe 50 feet. I had to stop and say, 'All right, that's
enough.' I mean, I know how most people perceive pot as a
mind-numbing drug. It's a common misunderstanding that if you've
smoked a lot of pot, you can't drive. But for people like us, there's
a tolerance to the drug. You won't get any more high than the first time."

The key, everyone interviewed for this story agreed, is to preach
responsibility.

"I think if we had open communication between parents and kids,
letting them know that certain behaviors are OK and setting
boundaries with them, it might work better," Mondiel says. "More
information on the actual substance rather than just saying it's bad
leads to a better informed decision. You can't say marijuana is
illegal for being a drug because cough syrup is a drug, too, and so
is Excedrin."

Believe it or not, Don and Nick practice responsibility inside the
backyard weed shack.

"We've had kids about 14 come in here with people and I've actually
cut them off," Don says. "I mean, you have all of high school to
figure out whether you want to smoke weed or not. I'm not going to be
the one who gets you started on it. You have to be ready for it in
your mind. And you need to know what's enough for you."

If Adam has learned anything from living with a pothead, it's that
you cannot have a generalized opinion about them.

"These aren't bad people, the ones I know," he says. "They're not the
ones who go to schools and sell to 12-year-olds. Those are the ones
who need to die. But, I mean, they're over 18. They have the right to
be their own dumbasses."