As wonderful as cannabis can be, it’s important we don’t view it as the be-all and end-all to solve every issue, and its limited drawbacks should be owned.
The way I see it, there are two legitimate problems with cannabis. You are welcome to @ me with your hot takes, but the following are hills on which I am good to die.
1) Cannabis can be a factor in weight gain.
Certain strains can cause some people to develop a greatly increased appetite. While that’s a major benefit for those dealing with a copromised appetite from chemotherapy or wasting syndrome connected to AIDS, it can also turn someone not dealing with such illnesses into a raging land shark in search of every fatty food within a five-mile radius: chips, cookies, blocks of cheese eaten like a cob of corn, Taco Bell, ice cream—or even weed ice cream, which is just adding fuel to the fire.
Rarely does a stoner complain that the munchies result in them frenziedly eating “all the produce in the house.” Such cannabis caloric bombs can result in serious weight gain, and I have trousers I’ve temporarily lost wearing rights to because of the bottomless pit of a distended stomach I seem to acquire once I have stoned-scarfed an entire package of Pepperidge Farm Orange Milanos after some Wedding Cake. (Both the strain and the cake. Don’t you judge me, goddamn you. Look away, I’m a monster.)
2) Cannabis can ruin clothes and, sometimes, result in intense pain.
You puff puff pass, but not before your joint or blunt drops its smoldering cherry onto your shirt, blouse, dress, or trousers. You now have bedecked your attire with a brand-new burn hole—or perhaps it missed the fabric altogether and landed on your bare skin.
You’ll know if that’s the case if you find yourself shrieking while stumbling and furiously wiping away the offending briquette of bud searing into your flesh. And I haven’t even mentioned dab rig burns.
Okay, yes, there are some other negative things about cannabis, but it’s important to not let people blame serious problems on weed when the connection is simply not there. And as Merry Jane points out, a couple of politicians have recently tried to do just that.
The first one is Kentucky Republican Governor Matt Bevin, who answered an interviewer’s question if he would consider a cannabis legalization program, either recreational or medical, for his state. Bevin responded, bizarrely:
“Look at the homelessness, look at the increases in the emergency rooms. Look at the problems they have in law enforcement in bordering states. Look at the amount of disease and things that have spiked up as a result of people who are coming for the fact that they can smoke pot legally.”
Right then! Let’s break this one down.
• Unless you’re living on the streets after being kicked out of Section 8 housing for on-site cannabis use, I don’t think the homelessness argument one holds up.
• Okay, studies have found a link between an increase in emergency room visits in Colorado by people who have over-consumed, often in the form of edibles. Been there, done that, and it sucks, but it’s not fatal, permanent, or evidence of any kind of health epidemic.
• As far as “bordering states,” some states next door to legal marketplaces probably do see an increase in pot, which should be a sign that those elected officials should consider the implantation of their own cannabis programs, so their constituents can be law-abiding members of the community once again, and pay cannabis taxes accordingly. Plus there are all the potential reductions in opiate prescriptions and abuse, but moving on…
• I don’t have anything for “disease and things,” because like you, I’ve never heard that accusation, nor seen any studies to back it up. That’s because it’s complete hogshit.
Bevin isn’t doing himself any favors, but his ignorance and fear is marginally better than the candidate for “Most Hate Filled Politician While Sounding Clinically Insane,” AKA Ohio State Republican Representative Candice Keller, who pulled way ahead in that contest this week with thoughts on the reasons behind this past weekend’s living nightmare of twin domestic terrorism attacks that left more than 30 dead and 50 wounded.
The only thing a reasonable person should be giving after such an attack is donated blood, but Keller thought better of that, instead giving us all a lesson as to why the attacks in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, took place. If you think it’s easy access to firearms, mental illness, or a climate of hate fostered by 45, well, that’s wrong. It’s weed, dammit!
Let Keller break it down for you. From a (now deleted) post that appeared on Keller’s Facebook page:
After every mass shooting, the liberals start the blame game. Why not place the blame where it belongs?
The breakdown of the traditional American family (thank you transgender, homosexual marriage, and drag queen advocates); fatherlessness, a subject no one discusses or believes is relevant; the ignoring of violent video games; the relaxing of laws against criminals (open borders); the acceptance of recreational marijuana; failed school policies (hello, parents who defend misbehaving students): disrespect of law enforcement (thank you, Obama); hatred of our veterans (thank you, professional athletes who hate our flag and National Anthem); the Dem Congress, many members whom [sic] are openly anti-Semitic; the culture, which totally ignores the importance of God and the church (until they elect a President); state officeholders, who have no interest whatsoever in learning about our Constitution and the Second Amendment; and snowflakes, who can’t accept a duly-elected President.’
Did I forget anybody? The list is long. And the fury will continue.
Keller, rightfully, faced a blowback of appropriately biblical proportions, and numerous officials, many of them fellow Republicans, condemned her words in no uncertain terms.
The Ohio Attorney General tweeted, “No m’am. The blame belongs to the evil man who killed those people.” The sheriff in the district where she’s running in 2020 called for her resignation (“Shame shame shame Candice Keller”), as did the State’s Republican party chairperson, who added that her comments were “shocking and utterly unjustifiable.”
If I’ve said this once, I’ve said it a thousand times: Mass shootings are not the fault of liberal transgender drag queen advocates who enjoy video games, and may not have had a father present growing up, nor are they to be blamed on professional athletes, Obama, those who didn’t vote for Trump, or anyone who doesn’t hold the same religious beliefs of Keller. And they certainly aren’t the result of cannabis.
