Reefer Sadness

Let me start out by saying I like marijuana, after a long, hard day there’s nothing better than getting home rolling yourself a nice joint, putting your feet up and blazing some weed. Although it’s a tricky subject, as we all know, when I do this I’m breaking the law, seeing as marijuana is illegal. I know this and I fully understand, but let’s be honest it’s one of those ‘flexible’ laws, much like speeding. Almost everyone that drives speeds. Although on the flip side, nobody’s life is put at risk when I consume marijuana. So smoking weed is much less serious than speeding. Maybe it’s more like littering, although the environment isn’t put at risk when I get high... Well smoking weed is against the law, and let’s face it, if you’re going to break a law you may as well break this one, seeing as it harms nobody else or the environment.

Basically, smoking weed is good fun. I would also like to point out I’m not a stoner. Not anymore at least. I’m passed that. Yes, there was a time in which all I would do is smoke weed, on a daily basis, but it left me unmotivated and lazy; I couldn’t be bothered to do anything like; housework, University work, overtime at work (I always turned up for my usual shifts though, seeing as weed doesn’t pay for itself) or write my brilliant Blogs. It then dawned on me that I had become a stereotypical stoner. A pot-head. So I decided to chill out with my marijuana consumption, because the true fact is that people that truly love weed hate stoners.

“How can someone that loves weed hate stoners?”
The fact is that one day everyone that smokes cannabis hopes that it will either become legal or decriminalized; stoners want that too, of course. The problem arises when we look at the people that smoke weed. The depiction of cannabis consumers never falls into the lines of what I am; a casual smoker that works, studies and has an active social life, instead we see the zombie-like stoners, glued to their X-Box 360s, surrounded by a mess of dirty clothes and dirty dishes encrusted with old food that is no longer distinguishable. It looks as if a bomb has gone off in their bedroom.

These people do nothing for the cause. Stoners are to the decriminalization/legalisation cause as what a scantily clad feminist was to the equal rights for women movement; an oxymoron. Even some of the most famous “stoners” of all times aren’t actually “stoners”, in my opinion, but people that love weed. For example, let’s look at Tommy Chong. For those without knowledge of Tommy Chong, I will explain that he is part of a comedy duo named Cheech & Chong. Now Cheech & Chong made many classic stoner films together, the first being Up In Smoke (1978). Now these were some of the first films that depicted marijuana users in a new light, they were no longer dope fiends such as the characters in early exploitation films such as Reefer Madness (1937) or Assassin of Youth (1936), no, by now weed smokers were lovable idiots and no harm to society. They no longer went mental from a couple of puffs or tried to rape innocent white middle-class women, they were just a couple of dudes that liked to get high. The fact is if Tommy Chong was a real stoner these excellent movies would have never been made, instead, Chong would’ve simply been at home talking about making them, because that’s what stoners do; talk about doing things. They rarely accomplish anything, other than maybe setting a new high score on [add recent videogame for topical effect].

So while the rest of the world gets on with their business, stoners stay at home talking about maybe “nippin’ to the corner shop later”. This is why stoners are the anchor to the boat of legalisation. If they took their fucking heads out of the self-produced cannabis clouds for two minutes, looked in a mirror and realised that they’re doing nothing of worth; in life and for the cause, things would get better.