Pubdate: Sat, 24 May 2014
Source: Windsor Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2014 The Windsor Star
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/501
Author: Allen Abel
Page: C8

CONFESSIONS FROM A MARIJUANA-FREE LIFE

A rebel roams halls of DEA exhibit TARGET AMERICA

BALTIMORE - More than 22 million people have visited a travelling
exhibition sponsored by the Drug Enforcement Administration of the
U.S. Department of Justice and entitled "TARGET AMERICA: Opening Eyes
to the Damage Drugs Cause" since it opened in 2002.

Now add one lone non-pothead to the list.

The display currently is at the Maryland Science Center on Baltimore's
Inner Harbor. At the entrance, I am confronted by the wreckage of a
1994 Thunderbird whose driver, "a 43-year-old male who tested positive
for marijuana, cocaine, benzodiazepines and opiates," killed a
31-year-old mother of three in a fiery Ohio crash.

"What is left are these," reads a placard near the twisted debris.
"The crumpled car, the accident, the stolen goods, the lost dreams . .
. the children and the families, the spoiled land, the bills we pay,
the price."

Thus jolted, I move along to "an actual South American jungle coca
processing lab," then "a re-created Afghan heroin factory," and then
walls of posters and racks of handouts proclaiming the equal and
inimical menace of Cannabis sativa.

"Heavy marijuana use in the teen years has been shown to cause a loss
of several IQ points," a poster says, explaining my undiminished brilliance.

"MYTH: It won't hurt you, it's just a plant, a natural herb," we read
further on.

"FACT: Marijuana can impair your JUDGMENT causing you to do things you
might REGRET."

"Isn't smoking marijuana less dangerous than smoking cigarettes?" asks
a brochure called Tips for Teens.

"No. It's even worse," the flyer insists. "Five joints a day can be as
harmful as 20 cigarettes a day."

I am reading all this in a state that last month reduced the crime of
being busted with 10 grams of weed from a criminal to a civil offence
punishable by a fine of $100 or less.

"Decriminalizing possession of marijuana is an acknowledgement of the
low priority our courts, prosecutors & police attach to this issue,"
was the proud Tweet from Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, a likely
candidate for the U.S. presidency in 2016 should Hillary Clinton be
too buzzed out of her mind to succeed the Honolulu stoner who runs the
White House now.

Which brings me - at my editor's insistence - to me.

Spending an hour touring TARGET AMERICA makes me even more
self-satisfied than usual that I never have sucked on a crack pipe,
shot up with heroin, freebased cocaine, brewed crystal meth in a motel
room, dropped a tab of LSD, popped a handful of uppers, raved on
Ecstasy, partied with Molly, gulped Oxycontin like Skittles, or worn
nasal strips like California Chrome.

Neither have I ever smoked marijuana in my entire six-and-a-half-decade
lifetime.

"You're practically the only boomer who has never tried pot, and your
observations, coming from a culture where it's being completely
destigmatized, are of interest," my boss inveigles in an email. "Pot
is so common, why have you never smoked?"

The accusation is true. I never have fired up a joint, or eaten one of
those hemp-filled brownies that my psych-o-delic college roommates
used to bake in the Sixties. (They also put mescaline in their
Jell-O.) I was in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in 1968, but I left
my companions in line at the Fillmore West and took a bus across the
bay to watch the Oakland A's play a doubleheader.

I've never even seen Reefer Madness.

But "common" and "destigmatized" are powerful words, loaded with
personal histories, political biases, and the presumption that any
citizen is free to choose which laws to obey and which to flount, or
that someone else can decide for you what is and isn't cool.

Even without marijuana, my life has not been short of impaired
JUDGMENT, and deeds that I REGRET. Nor would I ever indict my friends
as felons because long ago, or still today, they enjoyed whatever
feeling issues from drawing that acrid smoke down into their souls.

By the time my nine-year-old daughter is in university, marijuana will
be legal everywhere on this continent. TARGET AMERICA and the Drug
Enforcement Administration lost that war to Cheech and Chong and
Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg a long time ago. But knowing that I'd be
a Dad 36 years in the future wasn't why I didn't go to Woodstock with
the rest of my friends, back in the summer of '69. It just wasn't my
scene. Sorry, it still isn't.

"We need to teach our kids how to deal with peer pressure, how to feel
good about themselves," a woman named Susan Fox from the DEA tells me
as I walk through the museum. If that is a strength that my parents
left me, I thank them.

Maybe getting high is the greatest show on earth, and I've made a
mistake by missing it. Maybe I'll need cannabis as medicine in the
coming years. We will see.

Then again, caffe latte has been legal for my entire lifetime, and
I've never tried that, either.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt