I Don't smoke pot. Or, more accurately, I haven't had the opportunity to smoke pot in time out of mind. But even when I did smoke pot, it was pretty rare. (Full disclosure: This statement does not apply to the six weeks of the 1991 Gulf War, during which time I was a resident of Tel Aviv and Saddam Hussein was firing missiles at my city. I think my roommate's and my soft drug use during those weeks can be fairly characterized as "medicinal.")
Of course, smoking pot is illegal — in most places, anyway, and certainly where I live now (Illinois' "Medical Cannabis Pilot Program" notwithstanding). Yet it should be noted that marijuana's legal status has only ever made me look-over-my-shoulder nervous about my very occasional use. It's never made me refrain.
This is because for as long as I can remember, I knew American pot policies were farcical. I can recall sitting in my high school auditorium for the "gateway drug" song-and-dance, and knowing that I was being lied to. This stuck me as sub-par planning on the adults' part.
Evidently, more and more Americans are coming to agree with Young Emily. CNN's Sanjay Gupta dove into the science in 2013 and famously recanted his long-standing anti-marijuana stance ("we have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years and I apologize for my own role in that"). President Obama has likened pot to alcohol, and recent polls show a steady shift in popular attitudes. Millennials favor legalization decisively — even Republicans.
As is generally true with culture-war issues, however, the movement toward sensible policy is slow and halting. We get dueling headlines like these, noted in The Washington Post: "Colorado sold 17 tons of retail marijuana in first legal year" vs. "Life in prison for selling $20 of weed." We get people like Pat Robertson rambling incoherently about God's will and enslavement to vegetables. We discover officials who think that if we raise marijuana legally, bunnies will become addicts.
All this even as millions of Americans drop their allegiance to the old conventional wisdom — not least, Washington, D.C., Police Chief Cathy Lanier. "All those [marijuana] arrests do is make people hate us," she said recently. "Marijuana smokers are not going to attack and kill a cop... Alcohol is a much bigger problem."
Of course, smoking pot is illegal — in most places, anyway, and certainly where I live now (Illinois' "Medical Cannabis Pilot Program" notwithstanding). Yet it should be noted that marijuana's legal status has only ever made me look-over-my-shoulder nervous about my very occasional use. It's never made me refrain.
This is because for as long as I can remember, I knew American pot policies were farcical. I can recall sitting in my high school auditorium for the "gateway drug" song-and-dance, and knowing that I was being lied to. This stuck me as sub-par planning on the adults' part.
Evidently, more and more Americans are coming to agree with Young Emily. CNN's Sanjay Gupta dove into the science in 2013 and famously recanted his long-standing anti-marijuana stance ("we have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years and I apologize for my own role in that"). President Obama has likened pot to alcohol, and recent polls show a steady shift in popular attitudes. Millennials favor legalization decisively — even Republicans.
As is generally true with culture-war issues, however, the movement toward sensible policy is slow and halting. We get dueling headlines like these, noted in The Washington Post: "Colorado sold 17 tons of retail marijuana in first legal year" vs. "Life in prison for selling $20 of weed." We get people like Pat Robertson rambling incoherently about God's will and enslavement to vegetables. We discover officials who think that if we raise marijuana legally, bunnies will become addicts.
All this even as millions of Americans drop their allegiance to the old conventional wisdom — not least, Washington, D.C., Police Chief Cathy Lanier. "All those [marijuana] arrests do is make people hate us," she said recently. "Marijuana smokers are not going to attack and kill a cop... Alcohol is a much bigger problem."
