Pubdate: Mon, 16 Apr 2012
Source: Cornell Daily Sun, The (NY Edu)
Copyright: 2012 The Cornell Daily Sun, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.cornelldailysun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1758
Author: Ian Cohen
Note: Ian Cohen is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. 
Guest Room appears periodically this semester.

REAL AMERICANS DON'T SMOKE MARIJUANA

There is a question that has and very likely will puzzle college 
students (and some quite esteemed economists) for a long time, one 
that has much salience to us all: Why has Marijuana not yet been legalized?

Now I hope to set a few things straight before I proceed on a bit of 
a diatribe. I do not possess any particular conflict of interest in 
writing this article and intend to be as objective as possible. In 
other words, I am not a stoner. I am not disgruntled with President 
Obama for not sticking up for my civil liberties (read: stoner's 
rights) and am not presumably hoping to vote for Ron Paul. I am more 
or less an objective observer. My interest is in emptying out our 
prisons and raising our tax revenue.

Before I proceed, however, perhaps a few facts: Tobacco, an addictive 
carcinogen with the potential to give non-smokers cancer, is a legal 
substance. According to the Center for Disease Control and 
Prevention, Tobacco causes upwards of 443,000 deaths per year (49,000 
of which are caused by secondhand smoke). Alcohol, another addictive 
favorite of many a college student, is dangerous enough to claim 
75,000 lives per year according to MSNBC. Marijuana? Zero. Not one 
death by Cannabis alone. Gang-related deaths involving Marijuana 
might be a high number; however, this can be blamed on the 
criminalization of the substance rather than the substance itself.

Let's face it: Marijuana is just not the kind of substance that 
should be illegal, especially in a world where tobacco and alcohol 
aren't, and especially in the supposedly free land of America.

There are probably many reasons why Marijuana was illegalized to 
begin with. I've heard theories ranging from racism against Mexicans, 
who were the first group associated with the plant, to Richard 
Nixon's hatred of those damn subversive hippies - and it is likely 
that both origins have some amount of truth to them. In my view, it 
was likely something of a mix of these two ideas. I do not place any 
validity on the idea that cannabis was classified as illicit purely 
for medical reasons.

Why is Marijuana to this day still illegal then? Because Americans 
have another, perhaps not entirely unfair, association in mind: 
Marijuana and laziness. If there is anything particularly un-American 
in this world (apart from Socialism, Nazis, Radical Islam and France) 
it is laziness. There is a likelihood that at the heart of every 
weed-hating American is the idea that this funky-smelling plant is 
leading everyone to be too relaxed, too smug and satisfied to do 
anything with themselves.

As Robin Williams put it, "If they legalize it, they're gonna have to 
regulate it and they're gonna have to put a warning sticker on a pack 
of joints. And it'll say: 'Surgeon General has determined ... this 
will make your music ... AWESOME.'"

This is more important than racism and far more important than 
medicine. It hits at our very culture as Americans, at what 
sociologist Max Weber famously called the "Protestant Ethic," the 
moral ethic of work for work's sake. Marijuana may just not be a very 
"American" drug. Weed may not be dangerous at all, but it might make 
you choose your iTunes visualizer and a bucket of Cherry Garcia over 
your problem set - at least that is the perception.

With this in mind, it is no surprise at all that tobacco and alcohol 
are not illegal. The fact of the matter is they are simply part of 
our culture. Tobacco may be an American economic institution, though 
arguably so is marijuana. What tobacco and alcohol have that weed 
doesn't is a connection to the psyche of Americans of all walks of 
life, conservative and liberal, rich and poor. Fat cat CEOs smoke 
cigars while construction workers share a smoke on their break. 
Manhattan aristocrats have their fancy wines while 'Mericans in the 
heartland drink their all-American lagers. Marijuana, on the other 
hand, still has a majority of Americans against it, even in 
liberal-as-all-hell California. Whereas alcohol and tobacco are 
perceived as the substances of working people, marijuana is perceived 
as the substance of slackers, who could use a swift kick in the ass 
followed by a subsequent, "Get a job!"

Don't hold your breath on nationwide marijuana legalization. If I am 
wrong about the primacy of culture over practice in this debate - and 
I hope I am - I will look forward to the day when one can buy a pack 
of Marlboro No. 420s or Entenmann's "Special Recipe" Chocolate Chip 
Cookies at the local corner store. That will be a trip.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom