Screw Weed: A Counterpoint

If you hang out at progressive news sites, sooner or later you're going to see an article from the marijuana lobby. It's usually an emotionally driven piece loaded with half truths by a card-carrying pot evangelist. If you were pro-pot when you got up in the morning, you already agreed with the whole thing and if you didn't give a shit you more than likely didn't even click on the stupid thing.

I bring it up here because the potheads are an albatross. They discredit any surrounding progressives with their hysteria - and yes, it is hysteria. While studies on the health effects of marijuana use have had mixed results, they all lean towards what any doctor worth his stethoscope could tell you in an instant - burning something and inhaling the fumes is not good for you. So yeah, special brownies are okay but they also won't cure cancer. That's an honest to god claim made by some of these people, that weed is a cancer cure. It stems from one study showing marijuana use shrank some tumors - and ignores other studies showing it grew some different tumors.

Cancer free at last!

I'm sure I've said this before but science has no moral lesson. It's just a tool for determining what is and what is is weed is not healthy. But more importantly, it just doesn't matter. The best legalization argument is also the simplest - "I want to get stoned." And considering how much misery has been caused by rich idiots gambling the whole economy into the toilet, getting stoned is a quite reasonable desire these days.

But I get the sneaking suspicion that that's not what's going on here. I don't mean some rasta conspiracy, I mean people have latched on to the legalization issue not because of any genuine concern for personal liberty but because middle class white kids smoke weed when they're establishing the other aspects of their identity.

"Vote Ron Paul!"

Identity politics. That's what it always comes down to in America. That's how White Obama can be leading in the GOP primary and everyone acting like there's a world of difference between the two. I'll grant some incremental policy differences but both these clowns are for propping up the same failed system. A system whose failure is causing all that misery I just mentioned.

Now see, that there's a serious problem. Something we should all address before fussing over how best to deaden our minds. And that's why I fraking hate the weed evangelists - "The economy is in shambles, the housing market is in freefall, thousands have been wrongfully foreclosed upon, 90,000 American soldiers are sitting in Afghanistan to prop up a corrupt regime of gangsters, millions of Americans even with insurance still can't get adequate healthcare... but weed is more important!"

And that's why progressives lose in November.


Today's post is brought to you by delicious amphetamines!