Like most first-years coming to Georgetown, I had a difficult time adjusting to college life. I was nervous about making new friends and being in a different environment. I was beset by problems and self-doubt; my parents had just been brutally murdered and, worst of all, I was fat.
It was while I was at my lowest that I came across some kids hanging out behind New South smoking some big fat doobies. You know, reefer. They all had leather jackets with the collars turned up, long hair and vacant stares, just like in the TV commercials. I was just the kind of person that dealers preyed on: white, middle class, average intelligence, a snappy dresser. I was soon enmeshed in a seedy underworld I never dared imagine existed; one where people sat around making fun of TV shows while high, where scoring some “dope” was a way of life, where jerk-offs kept trying to convince me that Phish was a band that didn’t suck and shouldn’t be destroyed (no dice). I was on a rollercoaster of deception headed for a plunge of denial before dizzily disembarking onto a fairway of tragedy then losing my balance and falling headfirst into this metaphor.
The dangers of smoking marijuana are hard to exaggerate, but I’ll try. Every year I’d say about 9 billion people die from smoking marijuana-that’s nearly 1.5 times the earth’s population. The average school child has been offered drugs about 2,183 times by the time they reach fourth grade, half of whom will accept sometime: That’s over 75 percent. Marijuana has been thought to possibly maybe certainly cause the following host of ailments: shortness of breath, dizziness, memory defects, highness, cancer, the herp, blindness, erectile dysfunction, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, loss of inhibitions, loss of virginity, SAHE (Sudden Acute Head Explosion) and in some cases even full- blown AIDS from sharing needles. Sure, scientists will tell you that smoking marijuana is harmless and neither addictive nor more habit-forming than eating chocolate, or that no one has ever died from smoking marijuana, or that its impact on social behavior is negligible, or that it has a number of practical medicinal uses. But really, what do they know? Their “science” is nothing more than a base of accumulated and established knowledge acquired and systematized after extensive observation, theoretical speculation and experimental investigation designed to arrive at a logical and comprehensible notion of objective truth. Hardly the kind of method that would stand up to a couple of irresponsibly distorted facts and anecdotes used to convey the opposite message.
While some people think that TV commercials showing kids getting high and then accidentally shooting their friends, or running over a little girl on a bike are too heavy-handed and ridiculously unrealistic to be considered anything but ham-fisted, try this reality check on for size: I know from my own experience that every time I smoked up I ended up shooting a friend and then running over a girl on a bike, without fail. That’s right, there are a lot of freshly dug holes in my backyard, each one a grim reminder of the dangers of drugs, and relative softness of the topsoil in my backyard. One friend of mine, a prominent religious leader, told me that every time someone lights up, God shoots an angel. Think about that the next time you think you’re little hobby doesn’t hurt anyone.
Luckily, there’s an answer: The War on Drugs. Greedy Latin American drug farmers who hate America grow drugs in order to bring us down, and probably also support terrorists. Government subsidies to U.S. farmers that allow them to sell crops for drastically reduced prices that make it impossible for farmers and laborers in impoverished third world countries to compete at the global level certainly aren’t the reason they grow them. That’s just pure poppycock. No, the answer is spending millions more on a “war” aimed at eradicating the supply side portion of the drug trade, because spending millions to eradicate poverty and other social problems that lead to the demand for drugs in the U.S. would be too costly and ineffective. Questioning this logic is un-American and undermines our troops in Iraq.
As you can imagine, this was a hard piece for me to write. Emotionally, I mean, I certainly didn’t do any research in slapping this thing together, that’s for damn sure. I thought I would just let the factoids speak for themselves. But no matter the cost, I felt it was something I had to do. How much longer was I supposed to sit idly by and watch my friends destroy themselves by getting high and sitting around laughing? The madness had to stop. Emotionally drained and exhausted from the effort expended by writing this piece, I now plan to unwind by chewing a fistful of percosets and chasing them with a handle of Jack until I pass out, content in the knowledge that since both are legal they can’t harm me.
Scott Matthews is a junior in the College and associate editor of The Georgetown Voice. He thinks this piece is good, but not Delta in-flight magazine good. (www.harveymaria.com)
