One of the most interesting and admittedly humorous aspects of being a foot soldier for the War on Prohibition is having the opportunity to duke it out against a legion grey haired propaganda suckers, who even though they may have never smoked a joint a day in their lives, remain adamant that alcohol is more appropriate than marijuana.
In a recent article from The American Spectator, Editor in Chief R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. suggests that alcohol, specifically a scotch, is a more civilized recreational inebriate than marijuana because “one does not sit down to a scotch and soda to get blitzed, unless one is a veritable drunk.” He then proceeds to suggest that marijuana users are no different from the “sad spectacle” of the true alcoholic because both users consume their substance of choice for one reason: to get “blitzed” and “dropout.”
“Is that really civilized?” writes Tyrell. “I have never heard of a connoisseur savoring a joint for the taste. One smokes it for the effect.”
Unfortunately, what Tyrrell fails to recognize is the majority of marijuana enthusiasts are as discriminating, if not more, about the pot they consume than some drinkers are about brown liquor. Otherwise, there would not be nearly 780 strains of marijuana with varying effects – there would be just one that rendered the user into a catatonic stupor, and that would be good enough. This is similar to the distinction between social drinkers and alcoholics — there are people who use marijuana to relax and enhance time spent with friends, while others use it as a trap door and allow their lives to spin out of control. In this situation, it is important to consider that these individuals were likely going to end up at the bottom of the sewer anyway, regardless if they smoke weed, drink booze or subscribe to some novel concept of clean living. The truth is, some people are just born degenerates and are destined to fail at life with or without a buzz.
What is truly uncivilized is the fact that while some alcoholics and potheads are cursed with the inevitability of complete ruins, those who use marijuana still have a better chance at surviving the fall. The latest statistics from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention indicates that booze kills 88,000 Americans every year, which is a substantial number of dead boozehounds for Tyrrell to dance around while attempting to slander the safety of marijuana, whose death toll remains zero.
Despite a slew of media claims as of late that marijuana is causing the cognitive decline of the youth of America, Martial Law in Ferguson, Missouri, date rapes, baby killings, and a population of psychotics, not a single one of these incidents have anything to do with marijuana… or booze for that matter. In Tyrrell’s piece, he is forced to use the mainstream propaganda machine to support his anti-pot arguments because he has absolutely no experience with cannabis, which is painfully obvious when he suggests, “possibly the marijuana smoker becomes more convivial at first, but mainly one becomes steadily more isolated, more alone.” He says he is confused how marijuana, “a drug found to be so dangerous by modern science,” could be considered a civilized alternative to alcohol.
It must be considered, at least for the sake of argument, that if modern science has somehow proven without a shadow of a doubt that marijuana creates vicious, unintelligent – uncivilized — monsters, than by contrast research has also confirmed that it cures cancer, reverses brain damage caused by alcohol, and does not cause lung cancer.
Perhaps Tyrrell should stop buying into the Reefer Madness and just buy some reefer. Truth is, it goes nicely with Scotch.
Mike Adams writes for stoners and smut enthusiasts in High Times, Playboy’s The Smoking Jacket and Hustler Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @adamssoup and on Facebook/mikeadams73.
