It's a communist pot! I mean, plot!
AlterNet: Once-Secret "Nixon Tapes" Show Why the U.S. Outlawed Pot
I have two people in mind when I think of pot and drugs.
One is a cousin of mine. He was a straight-A student, and otherwise doing quite well socially and educationally. He then got mixed up with some people who were heavy into drinking and marijuana. He smoked quite a bit of the whacky terbakky himself. As I recall, he never finished high school and now pretty much just drifts.
I tend to think his supposed decline was more based in who he kept for company.
A second person I know is just plain old nuts. He smokes weed AND does a wide array of hallucinogens. I'm not sure about this, but I *think* he dropped out of school and got a GED. Or not. But at any rate, to listen to him talk is enough to make your brain hurt. It's not so much that he speaks like an incoherent stoner or anything like that. Not only is he big on psychedelia, but he reads. A LOT. And, despite his usual rambling vocal gait, he makes coherent points about topics that are WAY over my head. Thus the subsequent hurting brain.
Opponents of legalizing marijuana will tell you that pot destroys the mind. I don't know about that. I think the purported bad effects of marijuana usage are more of a case of (to quote one of my favorite TV shows): post hoc, ergo propter hoc. That is, one event doesn't necessarily lead to the next event (I just restated the interpretation as its opposite, but oh well...and based off of how they conveyed this whole theory in logical fallacy on West Wing). In the case of my cousin, was it the pot usage that sent his life into a tailspin, or the people he was hanging out with? Because, in the case of the second guy, he hangs out with other subvertive-types, but all fairly intelligent and bent on 'expanding the mind' as opposed to just getting high. This second guy is also a dope field (and does harder stuff), but he's definitely no low-watt bulb. True, he isn't raking in 6 figures a year (he works at McDonalds)...but I believe that is because counterculture people are generally frowned upon in Corporate America and are relegated to subservient roles in society, such as jobs where you have to say, "Do you want fries with that?"
Seriously, folks. Do 'potheads' 'fail' in life because of the J, or because of society's tendency to ostracize (and imprison) those who smoke the J?
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc? I don't think so.
Drug Policy Alliance
PS: No, I do not smoke (or otherwise use) pot. I do not smoke, period. My lungs would go into a revolt.
I have two people in mind when I think of pot and drugs.
One is a cousin of mine. He was a straight-A student, and otherwise doing quite well socially and educationally. He then got mixed up with some people who were heavy into drinking and marijuana. He smoked quite a bit of the whacky terbakky himself. As I recall, he never finished high school and now pretty much just drifts.
I tend to think his supposed decline was more based in who he kept for company.
A second person I know is just plain old nuts. He smokes weed AND does a wide array of hallucinogens. I'm not sure about this, but I *think* he dropped out of school and got a GED. Or not. But at any rate, to listen to him talk is enough to make your brain hurt. It's not so much that he speaks like an incoherent stoner or anything like that. Not only is he big on psychedelia, but he reads. A LOT. And, despite his usual rambling vocal gait, he makes coherent points about topics that are WAY over my head. Thus the subsequent hurting brain.
Opponents of legalizing marijuana will tell you that pot destroys the mind. I don't know about that. I think the purported bad effects of marijuana usage are more of a case of (to quote one of my favorite TV shows): post hoc, ergo propter hoc. That is, one event doesn't necessarily lead to the next event (I just restated the interpretation as its opposite, but oh well...and based off of how they conveyed this whole theory in logical fallacy on West Wing). In the case of my cousin, was it the pot usage that sent his life into a tailspin, or the people he was hanging out with? Because, in the case of the second guy, he hangs out with other subvertive-types, but all fairly intelligent and bent on 'expanding the mind' as opposed to just getting high. This second guy is also a dope field (and does harder stuff), but he's definitely no low-watt bulb. True, he isn't raking in 6 figures a year (he works at McDonalds)...but I believe that is because counterculture people are generally frowned upon in Corporate America and are relegated to subservient roles in society, such as jobs where you have to say, "Do you want fries with that?"
Seriously, folks. Do 'potheads' 'fail' in life because of the J, or because of society's tendency to ostracize (and imprison) those who smoke the J?
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc? I don't think so.
Drug Policy Alliance
PS: No, I do not smoke (or otherwise use) pot. I do not smoke, period. My lungs would go into a revolt.
posted by xanadian at 3:16 PM
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