Smoke 'em If You Got 'em? Nope, Sorry!

Everywhere you turn there's strife nowadays. People are losing their jobs, their pensions, their 401(k)s, their houses, their spouses and seemingly their sanity is going right out the door as well. The rich are getting richer, the poor are still not even on the radar of the rich, and those of us in the viciously savage middle class are left holding the bag. We're mired in three wars, though one right now is being defined as some hodge-podge of feel-good euphemisms meant to distract us from the reality that we are indeed fighting three wars.

With all this unrest and rampant incivility between the two major political parties, maybe what Americans need is to roll a good old fashioned doobie, light it up, crank up the classic rock station and forget about life for awhile. If Americans en masse could all get a hold of some kush, chronic or whatever designer strand of marijuana is hip these days, maybe we could start to do what I think none of us have really been able to do for some time: relax.

What if just for one day every American agreed to ingest some form of THC? We could put our keys in some large communal bowl and agree to just hang out in a park with a hackey sack or something like that. Maybe if we as a group stripped ourselves of all our worldly cares for just an afternoon, we'd see beyond the stereotypes and labels and discover that maybe we're not all so different.

Yes, I know, this is sounding like some 1960s era Hippie-Dippie babble, but maybe those Hippies had it right back then. Maybe the counter-culture movement was on to something. After all, what is the big problem with trying not to kill one another, and maybe finding some kind of common ground with your fellow man. Maybe I'm way off base here, but it seems like we're sort of in another 1960's right now.

We have civil rights issues (gay marriage), unpopular wars (Iraq, Afghanistan), and extreme polarization of our political system. Major social change seems to be on the horizon, but still there are small things, like the decriminalization and legalization of marijuana that seem to have us firmly stuck in the bygone days. How is it that we can have had three consecutive presidents who all admitted to some kind of marijuana use (well, Bush was into the harder stuff, but we have to assume that in 1972 he'd have a hard time passing the joint without taking a tiny, tiny puff at least) and yet we still don't have any legislation on the books that really makes marijuana the harmless psychotropic substance that is instead of the insanely derided narcotic that many portray it to be.

If for medicinal purposes alone, this plant needs to be legalized. I'll grant you that there is a large section of the country that doesn't smoke pot to alleviate medical conditions, but I'll also say that it certainly seems to take the edge off of life; and that's sort of the point, isn't it? So what is keeping pot from being legalized? Tobacco lobbies? Alcohol lobbies? Scientifically speaking marijuana is far less damaging for your body than either of those two substances, and yet there are commercials for booze on TV, and ads for cigarettes in magazines. The bitter irony of course is that neither substance really needs any help from Madison Avenue to continue to thrive. People love to drink; and they love to smoke.

Changing one's perceptions and realities via chemicals has been a "thing" since human beings gained enough sentient thought to realize that life kinda-sorta does suck...a lot. We as a species need to be able to change our consciousness from time to time. Some do it with beer, some do it with pot, others do it with religion. In all of these cases, altering your perception or shifting your focus is achieved through outside stimuli and a feeling of euphoria or at least release from care is experienced.

So, sorry America, even though some of you could really benefit greatly from usage of marijuana, and even though we all know as mature adults that it's not a gateway to anything besides munchies and long, rambling conversations that may or may not make sense later, the powers that be for whatever reason are choosing to keep access to it as restricted as they possibly can. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go give my kid a dose of Ritalin and take my Paxil.