I was listening to the radio the other day and there was a PSA on there. It was your usual goofy PSA with mis-used "stoner" terms, like "Good Stuff, Man" or "Let's Light Up some Weed Man" and directly following this PSA was an advertisement for wine titled "The Urban Escape Plan."
Now I'm not genius, but this seems, um, hypocritical? I'm not against alcohol, but let's call escapism "escapism", and a spade a spade. Both substances provide a means of "escaping" from problems, you know what? Stuff stresses me out and it absolutely sucks that I'm morally opposed to underage drinking and illegal substances, I wish I had a means to calm me down sometimes. It isn't bad, in moderation, but isn't moderation always the key?
I definItEly know marijuana is the lesser of two evils. Yes, brain cells die, well of course they're going to die, you hold your breath and keep smoke in your lungs, were you to simply suck it in and blow it out your brain would never have to suffer. If someone smoked a cigarette like that and then didn't exhale you'd get the same reaction. In the 50's they did a study where they cranked non-stop pot smoke into a monkey's mouth, it died eventually and they said the cause of death was pot. Well yes, it was, but it could've been anything burning and replacing the air the monkey was breathing. Alcohol, however, does kill brain cells and in a most malevolent fashion. Anyone ever heard of korsakov's? It's severe memory loss, and inability to form new memories caused by heavy drinking. Kidney failure, inhibition loss, lost reaction times, everything points to making alcohol worse...so why is marijuana banned?
Mexican Immigrants. In the early 1900s America was greeted with an influx of immigrants from Mexico due to revolution. So what else would farmers do then but put them to work? Great, good, well then the depression hit. Jobs were scarce, tensions were high, and the consensus was that the Mexicans had to go. But how? They needed to find a difference between them, and that difference was marijuana. They brought scores of it with them, and apparently the mormans were loving it. Yes, the mormans. Naturally the morman church didn't like this (well, they also don't like caffeine, tsk tsk) so the church made it illegal, and that sequentially became Utah law.
Then several other states followed suit, targeting the banning against Mexicans rather than Americans in an effort to deport them. In the East, the bigger problem for America was "Jazz and Negros" since marijuana was a very big part of the jazz scene, people found it necesarry to use the quickly to-be-taboo marijuana as a means to get them in trouble. here's an excerpt from a 1934 paper:
"Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."
Marijuana then got linked to violence, it got tied in with the alcohol prohibition, badda-boom- badda-bing, social stigmas arose around it, and viola! "Controlled Substance"
Yipes.
I always wondered why it was illegal where alcohol was not. And to clarify, I am not a supporter of weed, I do indeed enjoy a small amount of Peach Schnapps every once and a while.
Buttershots for me, only I've now resolved to wait until 21 before I ingest anymore alcoholic beverages. *sigh*
Moderation and responsibility are the key. I'm not nessicarily against any substance as long as it's done responsibly and in moderation.
I have friends who smoke pot and they're a lot less dangerous than a lot of the jerks I meet at bars. The difference is that my friends smoke, watch movies and pass out on the couch. They don't get wasted, go out driving, get in car accidents and kill people.
I think it really goes back to being responsible. If people are under any influence, then they shouldn't drive. And if there was a way for alcohol and marijuana to be legal, yet regulated, I'd be all for that. Though I really don't think that would be possible, as it looks like there's no way to regulate alcohol without going back to prohibition.
That was very informative. I always thought it was the whole anti-hemp pro-cotton thing that made weed illegal.
As a sidenote, another strategy of the government to expell Mexicans at the time was to outlaw some of their Mexican-American attributes: lowriders and Zuit-suits became illegal.
Heres another fun fact on the orgin of the work Marijuana , it was orginally spelled Mary Juana, like a hispanic name. The drug itself was scapegoated to being created and mainly used by Mexicans than later scapegoated onto African's.