I could write thousands of words about this, but I don't really want to today. People's positions on marijuana set in so hard that it doesn't really matter what facts you put before them. A study that shows brain impact or a connection to psychosis (and they're easy enough to find, so go ahead and look if you want) is simply written off as fraudulent by the determined stoner. Then you sit there arguing about which "study" is legitimate. It's a waste of time.
For today, I just want to say this:
The legalization of "recreational" marijuana use in Colorado is being received with a lot of glee and a none-too-serious tone by much of the media, and I would commend you to what Larry Kudlow had to say about that in the New York Sun over the weekend. An awful lot of lives are going to be impacted in a negative way as marijuana use becomes more widespread.
My proposition is simple, and it's been the same for most of my life: People are better off not using the chemical alteration of their minds as their chosen form of "recreation." I would say, "You know it and I know it" but I realize there are people so steeped in the pot culture that they no longer do know it, and even if I confronted them with the question of whether they would want their kids doing it, they're too far gone to admit they would have any problem with that.
But there's no sense withholding a rational argument just because the most irrational among us will not accept it. Maintaining a clean and sober mind and body is the best way to live. It is how my wife and I live. We don't use drugs of any kind. We don't drink. As a result, we will never get a DUI. We will never wake up with a hangover. We will never have to be told about what we did to embarass ourselves the night before. This is usually the point where a lot of people start whining that I'm "judging" them, but I'm just telling you how it is. This is a better way to live. We don't sacrifice enjoyment of life in the slightest, because the fiction that fun is connected to chemical brain alteration is the invention of your crowd. We laugh and smile at night and suffer no repercussions in the morning. We have no trouble relaxing, unwinding, mellowing out . . . all of this is easy to do through the natural chemical makeup God put it in you. We don't need any help from anything smoked, snorted, consumed or injected.
And here in Michigan, where pot smoking remains illegal for "recreational use," we have no concerns about the law. We don't break it, except with respect to ObamaCare.
As a result, pot smokers, we live better than you. If you don't like hearing it, that's your problem.
To those who want the legal right to alter their brain chemistry in the pursuit of "recreation," you may indeed escape legal sanction, but you can't escape the ultimate price that's paid when you choose to rely on a chemical for things that you could attain naturally. That puts you in a kind of slavery that society has largely and regrettably accepted, and which you have likely lost all ability to step back and recognize, but despite your insistence that you don't "need" it, people like you spent an awful lot of time and money trying to make it legal, and that's a priority that's hard to respect. Where it's still illegal, you put yourself in legal jeopardy to get it, and that's a priority that's impossible to respect.
You risk jail so you can get stoned. When people risked jail during the Civil Rights movement because they were demonstrating on behalf of justice, that was a choice one could easily respect and even admire. When you risk jail so you can get stoned, that just shows that you're an idiot.
The fact that those of you in Colorado can now do it legally is nothing to celebrate. You're still choosing slavery to a thing that has huge potential to control your mind over time - and I'm not talking about only the pot. I'm talking about the larger proposition that chemical alteration of your mind is preferable to keeping your mind in its natural state. You've sold out to that. I would say God help you, but God already gave you all the chemicals you need to live well, and you chose to go in search of different ones. If He helps you now, He is truly merciful.
By the way, as to the argument that black men are more likely to be jailed for marijuana use than whites even those their usage rate is the same, that may very well be true. But this is the wrong solution to the problem. Given the disadvantages many black men were born into, the last thing they need is anything that further encourages them to use drugs. That may keep some of them out of jail, but it won't help any of them succeed in life. And if that was what you really wanted for them, you wouldn't support this.
But I suspect those of you who support this really just want to get stoned. As such, even if you win the political battle, you lose.
