Drug War Has Been Useless: Let’s Start Fresh w/ New Marijuana Policies

Growing up in a world where your you think your elders have all the wisdom – teachers, parents, police men, politicians have all said that drugs are the worst things on Earth. This cultivated ideas of drug-dealing kingpins in movies such as Scarface and Friday has long been engrained in my head as a kid. Guns, liquor, rapists and high-fructose corn syrup are much safer than pot. If you see a marijuana plant growing from the ground next to a pedophile offering candy, societies’ reasoning dictates getting candy from the pedophile is a safer bet. Sure the innocence is lost with the pedophile, but hey…the vile marijuana plant has not claimed another soul. Reasoning still questioned to this day why marijuana is such a vilified plant.

It was engrained that marijuana was a horrific drug to use – much worse than crack, heroin, cocaine, meth and ecstasy. Stories and news portrayed children getting caught for smoking cannabis with all drug use ending up in police hands. As the years progressed and upon further knowledge about marijuana, intelligent kids would be showing up to class before a hard test with the skunk-like, pungent aroma of the marijuana plant still mixed in with their cheap cologne and perfumes. Marijuana was considered an evil drug – and to see how popular this plant was among bright peers and colleagues was baffling.

With so many stories of more friends ‘jumping down the rabbi hole’ of the dark-side of cannabis use has changed my perspective of the therapeutic and holistic marijuana plant. To see colleagues that smoke weed everyday and function as doctors, lawyers, chefs, engineers and programmers has swayed this medical marijuana patients vote for a comprehensive marijuana policy. Apparently all the lies told by elders, movies and commercials have steered clear of the truth with their pothead stereotypes drastically different from the realistic stoner. It wasn’t about marijuana, and it was more about who they were as a person. Obama and John Stewart smoked pot and we don’t vilify them – perhaps if they were degenerates, then a point would be made about the cannabis use.

American marijuana laws have yet to be successful. Marijuana can be seen in all facets of the country with added efforts to control cannabis consumption having little to no hope of achieving anything at all helpful. At this time, an expanded attempt for marijuana policy reform is in dire need – with step one being: re-evaluating the potential benefits of marijuana and how harmful it really is minus the government propaganda. How about taking away some of the heat towards marijuana and re-allocate them to a more harmful-known drug i.e.: heroin and meth.

This is a long and arduous task to completely alter the rules behind marijuana, that have been so longed vilified. How about the 1^st step in evolving as a people is to squash the negative stigma that is all around marijuana and to overcome its antiquated and biased views.