Pot enthusiasts, rejoice. You’re winning. Legalization is now just a matter of time.
If only that mattered at all.
The editorial board of the New York Times wrote a piece Sunday endorsing ?repealing the federal ban on marijuana.
As one of the largest and most influential newspapers in the nation, that’s a big deal.
It shows that people are relaxing their views on the drug.
And it makes sense. ?Marijuana is not as dangerous as other drugs such as alcohol or heroin.
It is much less addictive. No one overdoses on too much pot. It has been shown to have medicinal value.
It doesn’t really make sense to stop willing adults from partaking of it in their free time.
The public agrees.
Fifty-four percent of Americans believe it should be legal, and the numbers are growing.
The youth is especially receptive to it, with 69 percent of millennials endorsing legalization. Forty-seven percent of Americans say they’ve tried pot. Seventeen states have ?decriminalized it.
This all adds up to an inevitable trend. Marijuana will be legalized. It’s not a question of if, but when.
So can we please stop talking about it?
Marijuana is one of those soapbox issues that people, especially young college kids, love to discuss.
It comes down to freedom, being open-minded and fighting the “man.”
It was banned because the adults in charge didn’t understand it, so they locked it away.
But now we’re winning. We have spoken, and they can’t keep us down ?anymore.
It’s a fun issue to argue, because it’s easy.
No one disagrees with you, especially not in your quad.
You can write a term paper on it and feel good about yourself for contributing to political discourse.
But in the grand scheme of things, decriminalization of marijuana matters very little. In 2012, an estimated 658,231 people were arrested for marijuana possession. That might seem like a lot, but that’s just 5.4 percent of all ?arrests made. It’s not some big victory we’re achieving.
What about the myriad of other problems our country is facing? How about our $17 trillion debt?
Our politicians routinely fall short on their promises and can’t get anything passed in Congress.
We have a health care system that works in only the most technical sense. The government spies on us and collects more of our personal information every day. Our international policies are a mess. We constantly pollute the environment. Our economy is still ?struggling.
We aren’t doing so great.
But instead of fixing any of these things, we’re getting legalization.
None of these problems have easy solutions. We’ll have to reckon with some fundamental flaws if we’re going to get out of any of them. But they’re the ?important issues.
Young people especially need to worry about them, because our future is going to be what we make it. The more time we spend on trivialities such as legalizing marijuana, the less we can work on stuff that’s actually going to hurt us. We can’t stay blind to the big ?problems we have.
Of course, if all of this is too much, if you’re bummed out by the state of affairs now, at least you can relax with a joint in peace.
