I can’t stand pot. Just can’t.
It’s one of my prejudices. Whenever someone steps next to me and offers me some or asks me for some, you can almost warm yourself with the contempt radiating from my glare. If someone tries to convince me of some argument after having a few hits, they’re merely a fly in the room, lazily buzzing around my face.
That’s also probably what some people who saw those marching to the Capitol on Sunday as part of the Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival thought. Especially when the protesters got to the Capitol and ran out of batteries for their megaphone.
Most politicians don’t take pot smokers or their position for the legalization of marijuana, be it for medicinal or recreational reasons, seriously. Most simply bat away comparisons to cigarettes or alcohol usage, talking about marijuana as a gateway drug or its potential negative effect on the “youth of America.”
The arguments for legalizing marijuana are numerous: It provides medical benefits for glaucoma, cancer and multiple sclerosis patients; it’s not a destructive drug if it’s not abused; it would take a hell of a lot of funding away from a war on drugs that most of America has forgotten about and that most sensible people would say has been a waste of money.
But yet, we largely avoid debate. Medical marijuana certainly has more traction than full-scale legalization, but even that comes with a stigma.
Pot just doesn’t get talked about. Back at the online town hall Barack Obama held earlier this year, an online questioner asked Obama if he thought legalizing marijuana would help grow the economy. Not only did Obama answer that it wouldn’t — without offering his typical wonky, professorial explanations of why it wouldn’t — the media outlets covering it thought it was odd that he actually addressed the question.
It’s not a major issue. It’s relatively harmless in the grand scope of national issues and the U.S. Department of Justice has already made it clear they aren’t going after those caught with medical marijuana.
So why do most people dismiss the question of legalization — or rather, invalidate the legitimacy of the matter to begin with — without so much of a consideration of the issue?
Because those people are potheads, that’s why. They go around, shuffling through life, slowly mumbling about how their freedoms are taken away when they barely utilize that freedom to do anything other than head to the store for some Cheetos.
Sound offensive? Yeah, it should — it’s the same way that every legislator and elected official treats people asking to legalize it.
We can sit here and say those people blocking the lines of discussion on the issue have reasonable critiques on marijuana, citing (for example) scientific studies that show links between marijuana and dementia. But even if reasonable arguments against legalization exist, they mean nothing to the representative who just thinks, “Fucking stoners,” and dismisses pro-legalization folks with a terse nod to the many positive uses for hemp.
This isn’t just a problem with pot though. It affects any stereotypically leftist issue that comes to the forefront. There’s a reason leftists are stereotyped as “pot-smoking hippies” by their opponents. For who needs to address their concerns about the war, poverty and labor rights when their leaders formulate their opinions in an intoxicated state?
Yet, though opinions appear less credible if formed in a haze, they shouldn’t be dismissed simply because the people pushing them seem strange.
Thankfully, some members of the state Legislature understand that. Well, somewhat. The Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act proposed by Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, and Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, might actually pass this time around, which would allow those with prescriptions to grow a small amount of marijuana without repercussions.
That’s great, but will we ever have someone in the U.S. Congress seriously campaign for legalization?
No, of course not. We have enough problems in this country — the war in Afghanistan, the financial crisis, the BCS system — to waste time on the issue of pot. So for the time being marijuana advocates may have to settle for medical legalization.
But if medicinal marijuana doesn’t lead toward more lenient legislative attitudes and doesn’t prove that pot isn’t any more dangerous than alcohol (or any more helpful), perhaps the legalization advocates need a good PR person and an image makeover. Get a former legislator who’s as clean as a whistle — and moderate, too — to start advocating for it in public, and build a marketing campaign and new public interest group around it. Secure some sympathetic wealthy elite to fund your campaign. Then unveil your slogan: “You can’t free your mind without freedom of choice.”
Jason Smathers ([email protected]) is a first-year graduate student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
