Raining with thick cloud bundles huddling close — quick snapshot off my back patio this early Wednesday on a small stretch of California’s north coast.
Just a little while after sunrise, one cup coffee sipped-away, working now on a yerba mate tea — included also in the morning routine, a small bowl.
And speaking of cannabis, even in a way-enlightened age, the 2014 Monitoring the Future study reveals young people aren’t dopes. Released yesterday, the survey of US 8th-10th-and-12th-graders found alcohol/drug use down across the board.
Marijuana, too, even with widening legality.
(Illustration found here).
A long time ago, the comedian/social observer, Lenny Bruce, intoned:
“Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will some day become Congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.”
Sorry, Lenny, Congresscritters have become way-more idiotic since your time (1965, “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People“). And completely useless, with this last batch of knuckleheads most-likely: ‘Worse. Congress. Ever?‘
Anyway, marijuana’s legal fight came from without, not within government. Just last June, federal DEA honcho Michele Leonhart, evaded the question of whether heroin is worse than marijuana:
Again, all drugs, they’re illegal drugs,” Leonhart started, before being cut off by Polis.
“Yes, no, or I don’t know?” Polis said.
“If you don’t know, you can look this up. You should know this as the chief administrator for the Drug Enforcement Agency. I’m asking a very straightforward question: Is heroin worse for someone’s health than marijuana?”
Leonhart ducked again, repeating, “All illegal drugs are bad.”
The entire, long-time ‘War on Drugs‘ has been a colossal failure — an academic report in May of this year called for an end to it: ‘“The pursuit of a militarised and enforcement-led global ‘war on drugs’ strategy has produced enormous negative outcomes and collateral damage.”‘
Besides, thrown in amongst heroin, crack cocaine, and even the real gateway drug, alcohol, is one of most-simplest of weeds, a wonder lost in a ‘drug‘ world.
And American’s youngsters have more control and understanding than the DC assholes give them credit. In that ‘Monitoring the Future‘ survey, the chart presented really displays how teen use of everything from alcohol to Bath salts and e-cigarettes have been decreasing since at least 2011.
More via the Washington Post:
Marijuana use? Down.
Alcohol use? Way down.
Cigarettes? Waaay down.
Fewer than 15 percent of 12th-graders reported using cigarettes any time in the past month, down from well over 35 percent in the late 1990s.
Monthly alcohol use dropped from nearly 55 percent of 12th-graders in 1992 to less than 40 percent in 2014.
Even weed, which has been on a flatter trajectory since the 1990s than the other substances, is down year over year.
…
The marijuana findings are particularly noteworthy given that Colorado and Washington state implemented full-scale retail marijuana markets this year, and Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., voters opted to do the same.
A central tenet of legalization opponents, from present-day prohibitionists like Andy Harris all the way back to Richard Nixon, has been that loosening restrictions on marijuana will “send the wrong” message to youngsters and lead to an explosion in teen use.
Harris sums up the mindset best in a recent appearance at the Heritage Foundation: “Relaxing [marijuana] laws clearly leads to more teenage drug use. It should be intuitively obvious to everyone that if you legalize marijuana for adults, more children will use marijuana because the message that it’s dangerous will be blunted.”
While it’s a politically potent message — nobody wants to see more kids doing drugs — there’s a substantial body of research showing that teen pot use hasn’t risen in the states that have legalized medical marijuana.
In 2014, a year when marijuana was all over the news and national attitudes toward the drug are relaxing, teen use actually trended downward.
The two worse for the regular kid, alcohol use, ‘Way down,’ and freaking-ass cigarette use, ‘Waaay down.’
Real-good take-aways.
And maybe old Lenny Bruce could be somewhat, partly-right (via Mother Jones): ‘Good news for medical pot smokers: The $1.1 trillion federal spending bill approved by the Senate on Saturday has effectively ended the longstanding federal war on medical marijuana. An amendment to the bill blocks the Department of Justice from spending money to prosecute medical marijuana dispensaries or patients that abide by state laws.’
Medical use of marijuana has been a sensation, aiding/helping people with a shitload-types of illness, from Alzheimer’s to Lou Gehrig’s Disease, to Parkinson’s, and even to something called, ‘Writer’s Cramp.’ Good shit covers a lot of aches.
One has to either be careful, or don’t let some shit bother you (Via the Mayo Clinic): ‘However, some studies indicate that people who drink large amounts of yerba mate over prolonged periods may be at increased risk of some types of cancer, such as cancer of the mouth, esophagus and lungs. Smoking in combination with yerba mate seems to greatly increase the cancer risk.’
If not one thing, it’s another…