Should marijuana be made legal, and then left alone? Yes.




As was his style, he confronted me head-on.

“Mark, do you smoke?” he asked.



He was furious, but not about my marijuana use. He had not even considered the possibility of an illicit drug. He was worried I was smoking cigarettes! I nearly swooned with relief.



It took me a little longer to stop smoking dope. Having raised five children of my own and entered upon grandfather-hood, I can report two things: (1) I think we ought to repeal laws against marijuana possession; (2) I no longer think smoking pot is a good idea.

Marijuana smoking is, if anything, more commonplace today than when I was a wannabe hippie 40 years ago. My sons, now grown, tell me it was easier for them to get pot in high school than it was to get beer. Generations of Americans have grown up getting high, long enough for everyone to know that all the old horror stories about its use are ridiculously exaggerated. No one I knew who smoked dope as a kid – and, as I said, just about everyone I knew did – turned into a heroin or cocaine addict.


Yet the war on weed rages on. Twenty-seven years after a special commission formed by Congress and President Nixon concluded that punitive marijuana laws cause more social harm than the drug itself, nearly half of the drug arrests in this country are for pot. The numbers grow annually. More people were arrested for pot possession in America last year than ever before in our history, more than 800,000. What a tremendous waste of money and manpower! One of the strongest arguments against such misdemeanor drug laws is that they are completely ineffective.

More than that, the prohibition of marijuana gives police an undue amount of leverage over average citizens. When something as widespread as pot possession is illegal, police can use it as an excuse to harass whole classes of otherwise law-abiding citizens. It should come as no surprise the majority of those possession busts were young black and Latino men, even though surveys show most of the marijuana users in this country are white.

I stopped smoking dope many years ago. I have always urged my children not to use it, just as I have counseled them to avoid using other drugs and getting drunk. The effects of pot use are more subtle than drunkenness, which leads many to conclude that marijuana is a less dangerous intoxicant than alcohol, but it very subtlety poses a unique threat. Because you can go to class high, go to work high, drive high and otherwise function with apparent normality, it is easier to abuse marijuana constantly than alcohol, and that “normality” you feel isn’t the truth. Marijuana doesn’t make you out-of-control, it just makes you stupid. And while I haven’t surveyed the most recent medical reports, I suspect the health effects of inhaling pot smoke are likely to be at least as harmful as the substance that so concerned my dad.

For me, as with most users, getting high was a symptom of boredom and rebellion. Once I grew up and found work that I loved, competitive work that demanded real effort and mental clarity, I realized the effects of getting high, the confusion and silliness, were a disadvantage.



Mark Bowden is a former staff writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer and author, most recently of “The Best Game Ever.” E-mail: [email protected]

