I was talking with a good friend, having a nice casual conversation neither hitting nor missing any particular topic, and I casually her how her friend Marshall was faring. She proceeded to tell me that he was doing fine and had helped her through another harrowing day. I laughed at her remarks and the drama she played, giving Marshall such life, until she began laughing with me. You see, Marshall is the name that she has given to her favorite bong. For those of you who are non-smokers, a bong is a quick and easy way to smoke marijuana in mass quantities, ensuring a good high. I'm not going to explain how it works for two reasons: 1) If you're a non-smoker, you probably don't really care on the intricate details of working a bong; and 2) If you're a smoker, you already know how to use it. After we had settled down and stopped laughing, the conversation took that perverse twist into the argument over the legalization of marijuana. Haven't you always found it fun to argue with friends?
Later that evening, after dinner, during the aptly titled family time, my mother admonished me for my telephone conversation. She would, naturally, as her pot smoking days are long behind her, and she had to think of how my fifteen-year-old brother would take to the news that his mother had smoked dope as a youngster. Rolling my eyes, as she had only heard part of the conversation, I felt a lecture coming on and met it head on, with my charming smile. Mother babbled on for quite some time, stating several reasons why marijuana was harmful and should not be legalized, during which I began chanting "LE-GA-LIZE", over and over. I was so caught up in my movement that I didn't even see the pillow coming. I laughed and told my family that it was my turn to give them the common man's view on the legalization of marijuana.
I started off by stating the obvious reason for legalizing such a drug as marijuana: Drug related crimes and offenses. If we eliminate the need for drug dealers, we could eliminate a nice portion of crime and a nice portion of our police force devoted to the drug effort could be used elsewhere, not to mention that a nice portion of the government could be put to more effective use. We can even give some of America's more enterprising drug dealers a job in sales and maybe lessen poverty, too. Legalize it, pack it, promote it and distribute it, I said. Sell it at the Shell station on the corner and tax it to death. Use that tax money to support our schools, instituting more drug awareness policies, instead of policing them against drug dealers and armed boyscouts. Why not? The same thing is done everyday with alcoholic beverages and we all know that America likes to get drunk. I flashed a brilliant smile at my folks and continued on in fine fashion.
Think of all the industrial purposes we can derive from the legalization of marijuana. Marijuana has more uses than cotton, such as medicinal stress relief, pain relief...all around relief. Ask your local pothead for proof. You can make paper from the hemp plant, which is what marijuana is derived from, I told the. Save the trees. Marijuana is also used in the treatment of AID's and cancer patients. Industrious idea-your prescription and the paper it's written out on are made from the same thing. "Take two tokes every four hours." Can't you picture it? You can make other practical items from hemp as well, such as rope, stronger and more versatile. Who cares if it's more expensive. Think of where the money's going: To better educate children about drug awareness. I even added an extra one, for the benefit of all the people who've had to eat marijuana on any occasion, like you see in the movies. How about a dessert topping or food seasoning? A few sprinkles over your ice cream, along with some chocolate sauce and you're home free. How about a pinch on your chicken or steak? It's almost as good for you as salt.
I didn't stop there because I was enjoying myself, and so I took it one step further. I told my family, as they sat in stunned silence watching, to look around at our current drug problem and what's being done to eliminate it. Is the solution that has been decided upon working? No, of course not. That much is obvious, or this conversation wouldn't be taking place, I said. Instead, we would have been talking about Grandma's latest trip to A.A. or something else just as topical. My last logical reason was so extremely simple, it was absurd. (Imagine that! Any of my reasons being absurd.) Why not just legalize marijuana to see what happens? Surely the problem couldn't get any worse than it already is. Change the policy, for better or for worse. We take a chance every four years in November, anyway. Why not do it with marijuana, instead of fighting the war, I said, why not just eliminate our opponent? If there's not battlefield to go to, no battle to be fought, there's nothing for us to lose. We dropped the bomb on Hiroshima so why not drop the proverbial bomb on America, too? It's worth a shot, I said, just to try and save the lives spent and the money lost in the ongoing war.
The views I've delivered are the ones most widely used and argued by the uninformed common man, such as your local pothead, when the topic arises. It's a grand idea, I said, and I told my little brother to begin petitioning his congressman, sending letters daily. I sat back, breathless, and smiled at my parents, waiting for some sort of response, hopefully the right one. Mother lit a cigarette and passed it to Dad, who was looking at me in such an odd way that I knew it was lost on them. He took a deep drag and shook his head, laughing, blowing the smoke high into the air. After a short deliberation it was decided that I wasn't going to be allowed to attend family time anymore, not with views such as those.
