Once upon a time, many years ago, plenty of young, bright eyed and bushy tailed little rascals like my past self were introduced to the concepts of drugs. We didn’t know what they were or what they did, but for some reason a tiger D.A.R.E.d us not to mess with them, which wasn’t too difficult for most elementary school children (barring those exceptions who had a plug at 12 years old, to whom I say this is just not your part of the article, along with “Bruh”). Now as most child psychology experts would surely tell you, find an intelligent seven syllable term to somewhat corroborate one of the most effective ways of getting kids to be down for a cause is to get a cosign from a sometimes-animated anthropomorphic cat. It’s how they’ve been selling cereal, sports teams and way too many damn "Ice Age" movies for years. And now today, after years of intensive research and Wiz Khalifa mixtapes, the millennial generation has become witness to a growing national conversation on just how asinine the War on Drugs made the public perception of marijuana. It’s finally become high time to admit that the most dangerous aspect of smoking weed is getting caught (especially if you’re not white, which for some reason instantly increases your chances of long term incarceration exponentially).
Now in the interest of not pissing off my parents any more than my being a Humanities major in college could, let me establish from now that this article is not advocating for mass drug consumption or other irresponsible initiatives like that. The goal, rather, is to take away from years of treating a plant in the ground like Betelgeuse for the sole purpose of not having to actually research its effects. Plenty of upstanding members of our society partake in the blessing of Mary Jane: not just lobbyists and celebrities, but also baby Obama and probably your UPS guy. I’m not going to regurgitate all the scientific facts, Google is your friend, writing Cracked knock-offs is mine, but instead I will use this listicle to encourage those undercover stoners out there to tell the truth and be a public ally to your good friend Mary. Let’s face it: at least half of you only read articles when you’re high to begin with, so let’s dedicate even the smallest fraction of Odyssey we can to a demographic that deserves it and talk about why you (yes, you) should not shirk from repping your green vice if you’ve already taken the plunge.
[Note: Don’t do drugs, kids. I’m talking to grown-ups.]
1. Lying is a sin.
If we took an entire day to go over the vast amount of untruth told about marijuana to the general
public, what we’d find would only be about half as ridiculous as the excuses high people tell to not look like they’re several dimensions away from whoever is interrogating them. Let’s stop with the nonsense: in the words of the great Riley Freeman, “Real recognize real, and you lookin’ kinda unfamiliar,” when you tell me you just so happen to be practically floating off the ground mid-conversation. Seriously, let’s think about how awesome the world would be if honesty was its highest virtue and go one for one here in answering some of the most pressing marijuana related inquiries no one wants to touch on:
The marijuana plant is very much closer to being an aid for the cure to cancer than directly causing it.
We all knew Shaggy from Scooby-Doo was tweaking.
Your lips aren’t really turning black, your auntie only called you out to see if you’d check and now she knows you been on that loud.
If you got 20/20 rocking eye drops in your glove compartment, we all know what’s up.
If weed kills, then Rihanna, Cheech Martin and Katt Williams are some impressive zombies.
At least the seventh graders out there would have a wildly successful survival rate in this alternate-reality zombie apocalypse.
All this to say: regardless of where you stand on the issue, let’s stop lying for the sake of not having to actually look up some facts and/or snitching on oneself. For the attackers, you’re only contributing to more societal uncertainty regarding our massive iCloud of substance information which draws too many parallels to the abstinence-only education a lot of former students received and presumably ignored. For the defenders, you can only leave your adolescent sibling confused as to why you always eat down the entire kitchen whenever you smell like incense for so long.
2. You won’t die.
At the very least, marijuana smokers can also use the name of Jesus’ wine in vain when called upon to defend their habits. Alcohol poisoning is definitely real and assured deadly when taken to extremes. Weed poisoning? I’m sure Bill Maher would have made a New Rule about that by now had it been possible, and probably would have died during the filming of "Religulous."
According to a 1988 United States administrative law hearing, it would take the ambitiously stupid smoker around 1,500 pounds of green to kick the bucket, provided it is all consumed within 15 minutes. For those unfamiliar with the typical portioning of marijuana for a single session, this would be analogous to nothing. I quite literally cannot even conceive of anything as insipidly impossible as smoking 1,500 pounds of weed. Without having gone even a fraction of the way there, I can guarantee that whoever came the closest to achieving this feat either fell asleep, got hungry and then ate food until they fell asleep, or realized in a THC-induced spiritual epiphany (complete with unicorn narration), that dying from weed would very much be the absolute worst thing to do to the stoner community at large, and then fell asleep.
For our visual learners in the audience, that's about 150 times this. In 15 minutes.
Don’t get me wrong: there are still montage worthy, "1000 Ways to Die"-esque scenarios wherein someone may just so happen to die while smoking marijuana. The only problem is they’re all fundamentally avoidable to anyone who even passively tries not to die.
3. The people will come around.
Take a moment to think about how far the United States, as a governing body capable of dishing out vice laws, has come from the days of Prohibition. For a hot minute, our constitution had an amendment explicitly stating that Lady Liberty was not about her constituents getting turnt off the juice. Fortunately for whoever came up with the name Tila Tequila, the constitution can exist in this realm of sorts that allows it to be our most treasured moral compass in one moment and a decrepit scrap of parchment full of bad advice from the country’s forefathers the next. Thanks to that identity crisis, the country realized that they like drinking too much to keep on with the ban and eventually added another amendment for the sole purpose of existentially shitting on the previous aforementioned amendment and whoever decided it was a good idea.
From that little piece of history, we can glean this one essential factoid about the American people: our laws are only laws until they’ve been stupid laws for too long. The severity of our ban on marijuana is quickly becoming one of those household rules that deserve questioning, and Colorado and Washington are like the eldest siblings who are willing to talk to Uncle Sam like he’s not their dad.
Part of reaching this realization, however, is being proud of your chosen poison. Which is morally and ethically acceptable by now: in this post-industrial 21st century society, most of our favorite habits and hobbies are slowly killing us anyway, am I right? Adam Sandler decided he’s going to make enough C-list comedy flicks to choke on his Rotten Tomatoes, The Rock is going to look like a carved balloon until the next Stone Cold Stunner he takes pops a hole in him and deflates his entire body and the collective aggregate of all humanity will continue using up the planet’s resources and ignoring climate change until Florida is 75 percent underwater (which, in all honesty, is probably the unconscious goal for all of us in this situation). If the average citizen smoked weed, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of studies and news breaks as to why you should eat kale instead, but if enough people love it, they’ll still sell it to you for an exorbitantly taxed fee once legalization gets through.
4. America loves stoners, anyway.
If there is any success story to becoming a public stoner, it’s the Doggfather himself, Snoop [Insert his chosen animal of the month here]. If any given man can go from cold Crippin’ to cooking with Martha Stewart and guest appearing on Nickelodeon’s channels, with the only constant being weed and rap music, then someone should definitely investigate why both get crucified in the media as harbingers of all things scary to suburbia.
No, we didn't forget that time you thought you were a lion, Snoop. Or a Jamaican.
Our most legendary stoners are definitely some of the easiest cases of ethos-bias to have. The message is always cyclical, self-affecting and singularly focused: smoke weed. Granted, the following suggestion might not be the best case scenario for any functioning human, but if the late and forever great Nate Dogg was the voice that told the world to “smoke weed everyday,” we should at least admit that the universe picked some of the smoothest vocals out there for the cause. And if you’re like me, you recognize that the universe doesn’t make many mistakes beyond the cognitive science that explains why Donald Trump thinks he can be President.
So if you smoke weed, take comfort in the fact that the general public thinks most of your role models are cool in a humorous pseudo-infantilizing kind of way that is still almost dignifying, and will entertain them long enough to hear them out when they occasionally flex their membership to the intelligentsia. And to think: that, my dear stoner, could be you one day! All you have to do is be smart, take advice from this omniscient internet column writer and just admit you said “yes.”
Let me know how that works out for you, by the way. I’ll just be here, uh, editing my drafts. Yeah, that’s what I’ll be up to.
