Forfeiting an Audience: Why I’m Against Legalizing the Green Shit
by Bianca Ozeri
This week I read New York magazine’s cover piece about the legalization of pot. I thought the article was a little dull, or at least not what I expected. I was hoping for a heady prediction of what legalization—which isn’t going to stop at Colorado and Washington—might do to our politics, our economics, and our kids. Instead, it was a bland recap on some hippie town in Northern California, a tangential anecdote about a bounty hunter in heroin-plagued Baltimore, and an abbreviated account of Mexico’s drug wars. To me, the article felt desultory.
The author, Benjamin Wallace Wells, seems to make the argument that the war on drugs is over—and has been lost. He has some reputable supporters, Kofi Annan and Chris Christie among them. Wells suggests though, that this failure may simply be because we’ve won as much ground as we can:
The war on drugs has always depended upon a morbid equilibrium, in which the cost of our efforts to keep narcotics from users is balanced against the consequences—in illness and death—of more widely spread use. But thanks in part to enforcement, addiction has receded in America, meaning, ironically, that the benefits of continuing prohibition have diminished.
In other words, fighting the distribution and possession of narcotics simple isn’t worth it anymore.
If this is the case, I’m concerned. Especially now that we’re beginning to legalize one of our most popular drugs. Truth be told, I don’t know much about what legalization might do to our politics, or how it could enhance our economics. But that’s beside the point when I think about how it will affect our youth. If and when weed goes licit, the number of consumers, particularly young consumers, will surge. The article mentioned briefly that, “the younger you are the more likely you are to favor legal pot.” This is obvious. What’s less obvious is whether or not legal pot will make the upcoming generation high 24/7—and what effects that might have on posterity. (This might be a far fetched parallel, but the baby boomers, who are pretty much on everyone’s shit list right now, come to mind for me.)
Now, I grew up a pot smoker in a non pot smoking high school. The ten kids I got high with were a group of deviants to the rest of our grade, who voted me and my best friend, Ethan “Biggest Granolas” in our senior yearbook because we enjoyed our daily blunt. So yes, I was a heavy pot smoker from fifteen to eighteen. And I was a heavyyyyyy pot smoker from eighteen to twenty-one. I owe a few quintessential high school memories to the sticky plant, as well as my first, year-long stint of clinical depression. And now, at twenty-three, four years after my first attempt to quit, I have my addiction under control.
Using that word is what got me to this healthier place. I think the lingo we associate with pot—habit, recreational, not physically addictive, unifying, harmless—is a way for us to mitigate many of its negative consequences. Sure, pot smokers aren’t scratching their skin off, or giving blow jobs for their next fix, or gatewaying into other drugs, but from what I know, and from my discussions with many other smokers, we are getting panic attacks, we’re getting sad and aloof, we’re losing confidence, and we’re becoming less productive. (This being said, I know there are people out there for whom the drug works well, for whom it’s a godsend. But they’re getting what they need without legalization, which is essentially encouragement from our president for thirteen year olds to take that hit. Can you imagine how much worse peer pressure will become once “it’s legal” is added into the mix?!)
(I actually love this photo.)
I know that a lot of this stems from the fact that pot, for me, was an enemy. And perhaps I should have faith in younger generations to have the wherewithal to decide if the drug is good or bad for them. But the thing is, I don’t. Fourteen year olds are stupid, and they think that what makes them look cool is good for them. And usually that shit is bad for them. I’m certainly for altering the punitive measures attached to marijuana, but legalization, I feel, will do more bad than good. It will fuck up small, impressionable, developing children all over this country. And strangely, it’s in them that our survival lies.
