Although I am a recovering alcoholic, use the term “alcoholic” interchangeably with “addict” and whole-heartedly believe that marijuana is—at the very least—emotionally addictive, I am not at all against marijuana as a medical alternative to harsh narcotics or even as a recreational drug. But I am starting to get a little annoyed by articles, like this one on The Daily Beast, that seem to feel chronicling the long and ancient history of marijuana somehow proves…anything at all. I can’t wrap my brain around the relevance of Jesus using pot to anesthetize the sick or Shakespeare smoking weed to alleviate the discomfort of his venereal disease, to the legalization of marijuana in 2014. If anything, it just makes me think about how Coca Cola used to have cocaine in it and heroin used to be legal: none of this makes it right.
The Jury Is Still Out
Another piece in Salon debunks common fallacies about marijuana and attacks medical cannabis opponents, basically calling them liars who enjoy spreading their lies. And while this certainly might be true, it’s hard to tell what’s what when it comes to this stuff; one doctor says there haven’t been sufficient studies and another says there have. But what there definitely has been a sufficient amount of is frustration with the FDA, who has been relentlessly raged against and called every name in the book because they have yet to approve Maui Wowie.
The FDA has, however, approved drugs like Marinol: a synthetic cannabinoid designed to give patients the pain killing benefits of pot without the “high.” I don’t know much about Marinol except that pot advocates don’t like it. They argue it doesn’t encompass the whole plant benefits of natural cannabis, which is why patients generally prefer to smoke weed as opposed to taking Marinol (not at all because it makes you stoned—nope, that has nothing to do it).
Nobody’s Abstaining Because of the Law
I completely understand the argument that Big Pharma and their multi-billion dollar pill business is behind the cock blocking of mainstream medical marijuana legalization. Having been raised with a conspiracy theorist pot-smoking father, it’s hard for me not to believe that there is at least some truth to that. But I also think we are giving drug addicts a little too much credit. It’s hard to imagine that someone with rheumatoid arthritis who has been taking Oxycontin would be interested in switching to smoking weed instead because that is now a legal option. The truth is, if you want to use pot to treat your pain or nausea, you can. Pot is not hard to get; it never has been. And while there are only 19 states where medical marijuana is technically legal, I did 100% of my heavy and chronic pot smoking in states and during a time when pot was not legal at all.
So let’s just all get honest here. What we seem to be fighting for is convenience: the freedom to light up outside a cafe or the ability to see your doctor for a physical and walk out with a prescription for kind bud. And if you look at it that way, and realize you can be pro-pot and not pro-protest, do you still think it warrants all this media hoopla? I sure don’t, but maybe it’s because I’m not high.
Photo courtesy of MatthewVanitas (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons (resized and cropped)
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