Why do we fight against legalizing marijuana so much? Is it simply a political bargaining tool to keep in their navy blue suit pockets, maybe to entice voters, to use as a pawn to get something else? Do people really still believe it should not be legal? I mean, do people actually, in their hearts, believe it? What do they think will change with a vote to legalize it? People won’t start smoking weed because it becomes legal, and the benefits of it are numerous.
Most won’t argue about the advantages of a little weed anymore, that they do exist. The old arguments to legalize marijuana still stand and always will, but they seem stagnant because they’ve been repeated over and over again. I mean, many doctors do prescribe it, unlike fentanyl, heroin, or alcohol. It is prescribed by doctors who know the human body and recognize that it may benefit their patients.
It is a strong presence in people’s culture, a real medicine for so many who would normally turn to pills or alcohol, a tool to relax a busy mind or create hunger in someone with an eating disorder or a terminal illness.
At this point, it’s kind of ridiculous. Veterans are being mailed bags of opioids when they could use marijuana to treat their ailments instead. Pot, a weed that is arguably not addictive, one that is not behind mass shootings or violent crime in an individual setting, one that you can grow in a, well, pot!
I agree that marijuana is not for the youth with a still-forming brain, and it’s no secret that smoke can harm lungs. Too bad there’s no other way to consume it. Oh yea, there is! Edibles! Tea! It can be added to cheese puffs, chocolate bars, and pretty much any other food.
“Well, I don’t like the way it makes me feel,” people will say. Then don’t do it. Problem solved.
In certain states, people still sit in prisons for carrying a single joint, or for having just enough on them for it to be a felony. A felony! People are in prison for weed, behind metal bars because of something that grows in the ground! I’m not talking about dealers or offenders of violent crime, but of fathers and mothers and regular people who were going home to smoke a little in their own back yard.
Let’s get off our asses and work to legalize this nationally. Time goes so fast, and it’s being wasted in this country where it’s not legal to sit around a fire with a skinny white joint, telling stories about space, and finding some positivity and humor in this really effed up life we all share.
Teresa Forester Adams 