'I Hate Pot So Much, I'm Gonna Smoke It Daily'

"Anyone else wanna call bullshit on this article?" Radley Balko asked over at the Agitator.

Why yes, thanks, I believe I will.

The piece in question is the account of a British mom, Nicky Taylor, who went to Amsterdam to find out what it would be like to smoke potent cannabis every day for a month. She did so for the benefit of a BBC documentary (quite the assignment, huh?). But today's Daily Mail already lets everyone know what happened: Turns out that Ms. Taylor didn't like the drug one bit. It made her paranoid and afraid, she recounts.

Hmm. And we're supposed to take away from this...what? As far as I can tell, the experiment only proves that the cannabis Ms. Taylor smoked didn't agree with her. So?

I can't quite grasp the masochism involved in ingesting anything repeatedly that you hated intensely the first one or two times you tried it. What on earth is the point?

Let's say I hate the taste of grappa, plus grappa gives me a headache. Would I be mindless enough to keep drinking it every day for a month — and then make a big media stink about how my taste buds withered and how much my temples throbbed and how awful I felt? Um, no.

Plus, if Ms. Taylor had enjoyed the joints she smoked, I'm fairly positive we wouldn't have read a glowing article about her exhilarating experience. The outcome was predetermined: Taylor went to Amsterdam with the intent of proving that cannabis is 'bad' for you, and that's what she found (surprise!). Her rejection of the drug — as opposed to her endorsement — is the only reason you're reading about it in the Daily Mail, and, I suspect, the only reason the BBC will televise her adventures.

For every Nicky Taylor who abhors the effects of pot on her mind and body, there are dozens of quiet, content cannabis users who've smoked the drug for years and obviously like the effect. So let Ms. Taylor choose her favorite poison (cigarettes? bourbon? chocolate cheesecake?), let everyone else choose theirs, and let's all please just leave each other alone.

To me, the most salient part of the article was this admission:

In the UK, cannabis use has increased 1,000 per cent since the Seventies.

Clearly, that whole War on Drugs thing is really beginning to have an impact.

Comments

[Phelps]

Apparently they think "pushers" are forcing people to smoke it. As if drugs ever needed salesmen. They just need distributors. (Actually, weed doesn't even need that -- since it is a WEED.)

[Hunter]

Yeah, it's weird that some people act like all drug dealers want to do is get you to take drugs so that you die. Even the most brief examination of that business relationship exposes the incorrectness of that idea.

"Drug dealers don't care if you live or die. They just want your money."

OK, well, if they want to get the most money out of me, then I need to make a whole lot of purchases from them. If their product is so terrible that it kills me, they won't have the opportunity to get money from me. Moreover, if their product doesn't get me high the way I want it to, then I probably won't purchase it from them anymore.

[benpal]

Oh, but the experiment sells ... the Daily Mail. Who said it wasn't about money?

[Rimfax]

Well, it worked for Morgan Spurlock with McDonalds, so why not try it with marijuana? Expect to see this tried next with porn that clearly doesn't turn on the "experimenter".

[Hermes Ten]

I saw a version of this ploy in action when I was recently summoned for jury duty. The prosecutor asked potential jurors to give personal accounts of people they knew whose lives were ruined by drugs.

Clearly, the accounts expected were supposed to demonstrate the destructiveness of drug use. The prosecutor was not so enchanted with my tale of people I had known in the military who used drugs, such as marijuana, without self-destructing. I also don't think he liked me pointing out that the adverse affects these guys experienced were all due to being caught and punished for drug use, rather than from the drugs themselves.

I'll give him credit though, as at one point he did admit to the jury pool that the abuse of alcohol leads to similar tales of self-destruction.

I don't use illegal drugs myself, and probably wouldn't even if they became legal (for one thing, I don't like the delivery mechanisms --smoking, snorting, or injecting). I'm pretty sure though that at least a few of those present in the jury pool have a somewhat regular acquaintance with Mary Jane. However, I was the only one who responded in the affirmative when the prosecutor asked who thought drugs should be legalized.