Courtesy of benblogged.com |
I found an overwhelmingly disproportional amount of people who were up in arms about how this article was intended to slander "weed's good name", and hinder any progress that's been made towards gaining a more widespread acceptance of marijuana.
When Time published an article on "smoking pot", they found that 42% of those surveyed admitted to having ever smoked marijuana in their lifetime. Now they didn't state who were active daily/weekly/monthly users, just had ever tried. We'll give them the benefit of the doubt that the they omitted that information because of short-sighted journalism and not because the author had a political agenda.
On NIDA's website for drug abuse, they state that about 8% people they surveyed used marijuana on a daily basis.
If you do a quick google inquiring as to How many Americans smoke marijuana, instead of finding an answer, you'll find numerous results with headlines saying that 45% to 60% of people are in favor of legalizing marijuana.
However, I once took a survey on my stance for legalizing marijuana, and i was presented with multiple choice. An example of what they had for answers was:
- A) Yes, legalize it.
- B) Legalize it, but only for medical use
- C) Let the states decide
- D) Don't legalize it
- E) Don't legalize it and increase the penalty for those caught smoking it.
I chose answer B (it's okay if you disagree with me, it's not really relevant to the "point" i'm trying to make), but my answer was counted as part of the percentage of people who are "For Legalizing Marijuana". Now of course that percentage is now being used as a statistic showing that i'm part of a group of people in favor of something that i'm not really in favor of.
Now of all these stats, depending upon their political agenda, i assume that there's going to be some sort of fudging of the numbers in one way or another. But even if it was split right down the middle 50/50, i would dare say that 90% of the comments on CNN's article were the group of people up in arms trying to defend Lady Pottery and her "right to get high". So you can understand my confusion as to why there was such a large discrepancy in how one-sided the comment conversation seemed.
Then it hit me....
Although there may have been a few people reading that article who were like me and had a job with access the computer and can browse the internet and news sites on their breaks (or whenever i feel like really, i hit my deadlines)....the rest could be accounted for as part of one identifiable group!
All the potheads were at home sitting on their couch with their laptops, obviously having lost their jobs to a failed drug test, holding a handful of munches in one hand, and googling "weed" with the other hand! Of COURSE they're going see the headline, read the article and think:
"What? Weed not bad, weed good! Tell them weed good...".
It all started to make sense, all is right in the world again! I think i will now work on getting myself a pet zombie.
Even you potheads should be able to laugh at that. And if you can't....light one up and read it again :)