Pubdate: Sat, 08 Nov 2014
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2014 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Justin Moyer, The Washington Post

MARIJUANA MAY BECOME LEGAL IN D.C., BUT IT'S STILL LAME

This past week, D.C. advanced America's 21st century war on its 20th 
century war on drugs. Now that marijuana is somewhat legal, the 
city's African-American residents are less likely to be 
disproportionately arrested for a victimless crime. If the cannabis 
industry stays out of town, D.C. Council members, who should spend 
time fixing the city's public schools, won't be preoccupied with 
regulating a substance arguably less harmful than alcohol. And police 
officers who should be chasing bank robbers and murderers will no 
longer bust college students carrying dime bags.

All that's great. But none of these leaps forward will correct the 
real problem with marijuana: It is lame. Though the culture this drug 
fosters should not be banned, it should be avoided because it is tacky.

After Congress outlawed weed with the "Marihuana" Tax Act of 1937, 
bud occupied a place on the outlaw edges of American culture. 
Introduced to the United States by Mexican migrants in the early 
1900s, marijuana became the drug of choice for jazz musicians and Beat poets.

"We always looked at pot as a sort of medicine," Louis Armstrong 
said. "It makes you feel good, man. It relaxes you, makes you forget 
all the bad things that happen to a Negro."

A drug powerful enough to soothe the pain of Jim Crow was bound to be 
popular. Since the absurdity of anti-marijuana propaganda was 
apparent to anyone even marginally suspicious of authority, the drug 
was championed by a creative underclass. Jack Kerouac was a 
relatively early adopter.

"To drag on this thing was like leaning over a chimney and inhaling," 
Kerouac wrote of smoking "the biggest bomber anybody ever saw" in "On 
the Road" in 1957. "It blew into your throat in one great blast of 
heat. We held our breaths and all let out just about simultaneously. 
Instantly we were all high. The sweat froze on our foreheads and it 
was suddenly like the beach at Acapulco." Kerouac's prose is about as 
good as marijuana culture gets: uplifting, vaguely transcendent.

Then something went horribly wrong. Baby boomers adopted the drug, 
making it a symbol of 1960s unrest. Marijuana went mainstream and 
spawned a lot of terrible art. Buoyed by hippies turned yuppies, 
legalization became a social issue worth ballot initiatives, but the 
quality of the films, literature and-pun intended-schwag inspired by 
sess deteriorated.

Once everyone wanted to get high, it wasn't cool anymore.

Of course, you may or may not find the dated artifacts sloughed off 
by marijuana culture absurd: the meandering Dennis Hopper film "Easy 
Rider," the unfunniness of Cheech and Chong, the later records of Cypress Hill.

But an argument against marijuana as pop culture is about more than 
taste. When anything that whiffs of revolution gets coopted and 
commodified, that's a tragedy.

Now that toking up may (or may not, depending on Congress) be 
permitted in the District of Columbia, one can only imagine how 
pathetic a D.C. pot scene will be, bolstered by D.C.'s Type-A 
dorkiness. I'm talking about Capitol Hill wonks revved up after a 
subcommittee meeting, kicking it at the Palm, taking a toke. Or 
nonprofiteers giggling over a screening of Redman and Method 
Man's"How High" at the E Street Cinema.

Washingtonians are nerdy enough. When they let loose, unleashed by 
the power of an ancient drug some say is condoned by the Bible, it 
won't be pretty. It will be like Anthony Michael Hall in "The Breakfast Club."

Ideally, marijuana will one day be legal everywhere, but scorned by 
everyone but glaucoma patients and the terminally ill in need of 
comfort. Legalization is about what the state permits-not about what 
it condones. After all, it's also legal to read Mitch Albom, watch 
Steven Seagal and listen to Katy Perry. That doesn't mean you should.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom