Alright you squares, what’s your beef? Why so scared with legalizing pot? Is it the smell? Is it the munchies? Is it that you really believe the “gateway” nonsense that if you smoke a joint or two or 10, the next thing you know is you’re on your knees working off a crack rock? Is your positive social identity hopelessly tied to the belief that only lazy hippies smoke the tweed (that’s what we like to call it back home)? Or, and more likely the case, is it simply a social convention that has been turned into a moral convention (See Turiel, 2007) by, well, you squares? I think so….
I’ve been searching the blogs and articles and the best argument I’ve found in opposition only apposes some of the rational behind Prop 19, but does little damage to the argument of legalization overall. I’m speaking, of course, about the notion that passing Prop 19 would somehow take money from the pockets of Mexican drug cartels. I’ll just tell you right now, that’s a bullshit argument. I can guarantee that no self-respecting pot smoker in California, or the Pacific Northwest for that matter, is going to be caught with a sack of Mexican schwag, otherwise known as dirt-weed. It is the equivalent of drinking a jug of Ernest and Julio Gallo Burgundy. We in the know would instead drink, say, a Broadly Estates Claudia’s Choice Pinot Noir. There is no comparing the two. One has flavor and elegance; the other gives you a headache—I digress. The only way to get the money from the cartels, as a contributor to Allay Bordis piece in the Daily Titan stated, is to legalize it everywhere. But to do that, we must change the social conventional beliefs about pot and realize that it is by far less a problem than alcohol, which by definition is a poison; if you drink enough of it, it will kill you. Smoke too much pot: you’ll eat everything in your fridge (which will force you to contribute to the economy by re-stocking it the next day) and then go to sleep on the couch fat and happy.
Like any law-enforcement-fearing Oregonian hopelessly stuck in a backward state like Pennsylvania, where the liquor laws are enough to make my eyes cross (I can’t buy a bottle of wine at the grocery store, but I can buy a six-pack, to go, from a bar; Is that nucking futs or what?), the thought of easy access to good, green ganja with little worry about police kicking in my door for puffing up while watching Saturday-morning cartoons makes me a little homesick. Sure, it wasn’t completely legal in Oregon, of course, but the authorities didn’t really care as long as your weren’t doing anything stupid. That’s why I don’t understand the opposition. Why don’t your squares stop worrying about those of us who have reached the age of reason, are productive members of society, and just worry about the dicks drinking and driving or otherwise disturbing the peace? In other words, keep your social and moral conventions—convictions—to yourself, and to quote Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, “Go sell crazy somewhere else. We’re all stocked-up here.”
Please follow the links below to more useful information on the topic. Cheers!
Turiel (2007) on Morality
Ally Bordas Article (Very Interesting)
Psychology Today Article (Does Marijuana Impair Cognition. Implications for Prop 19. By Dr. Jann Gumbiner)
YouTube: A quick on Weed video (Very fun!)
McCaffrey, Liccardo Pacula, Han & Ellickson (2009)
