Legalizing Marijuana

Dateline: 11 January 2014

Last Thursday’s edition of the  Generations With Vision radio program was titled Legalization of Pot in Colorado. The first half of the show (15 minutes) wasn’t about pot. It was a realistic and sobering look at the evolving American police state, which appears to be setting the stage for increasing tyranny. 

Evidently, the FBI’s mission statement has recently changed from law enforcement to “national security.”  To which Kevin Swanson asks, “Does this mean the FBI has turned into the KGB?” And co-host Dave Buehner warns that "there is an evil tide coming upon us.”

As I’ve stated in the past, I appreciate Kevin and Dave and their biblically-based cultural analysis. Just this last week, they discussed everything from Katy Perry’s announcement that she isn’t a Christian, to the recent Mennonite church ordination of a lesbian woman pastor. In between that they talked about (in their own unique way)  feminism, patriarchy, the Girl Scouts, abortion, the increase in pre-teen sexting, modesty, contemporary  christian music, and so on.

Their program about of the legalization of pot in Colorado brought to mind my own experiences with marijuana... 

I graduated from high school in 1976. Pot-smoking was certainly prevalent in America back then, but it wasn’t any big deal in my small rural high school at that time. I suspected that a minority of hippie-like kids in the school smoked pot, but none of my friends were pot smokers. If they were, I don’t think they would have been my friends. 

I was a Christian in high school. My faith was important to me. I took Matthew 7:13 very seriously where it says:

 “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it."

I understood that intoxication with mind-altering substances was something that Christians didn't do. With the narrow gate in mind, I had "purposed in my heart" (much like Daniel in Daniel 1:8) not to take drugs or alcohol.  I had predetermined that it was something I wasn’t going to do. 

I also had the viewpoint back then that people who smoked pot were losers. As a friend of mine recently remarked, “You can’t fly with the eagles if you run with the turkeys.” Well, I guess that was how I felt. I'm sure there was a measure of pride mixed in with my spiritual convictions, but my ethics as a teenager were, in retrospect, surprisingly solid.

After high school I went to the Sterling School in Vermont for a year. It was a small program with only around 75 kids. My roommate was a guy named Dave from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dave and I got to know each other that first day of school by taking a long walk and talking about ourselves. 

One of the first things Dave asked me was if I smoked pot. I told him no. He wondered if I had ever tried it. I said no. He wondered if I wanted to try it. I said no. Dave told me his mother had smoked pot with him and his friends back in Ann Arbor. That shocked me.

Dave informed me on that first day that he had recently given up smoking pot. I was glad to hear it. Nevertheless, it wasn’t long before Dave was smoking pot in our room. When I expressed some disappointment at that, and said I thought he had quit, he got downright surly. He told me that I’d be smoking pot with him by the end of the year. 

I came to realize that several other kids at the school were pot smokers too, and Dave was supplying them. When I asked him where he got the stuff he frankly revealed to me that it came through the mail in “care packages” from a friend back in Ann Arbor. Upon further questioning, Dave told me his friend was a rich older gay man. 

That really shocked me, and it confused me too, because Dave was popular with girls. “So, are you gay?” I asked. He told me he was bisexual. I told him that was disgusting, He laughed.

A few months into the school year, Dave yelled out to another guy in the dormitory that he had gotten a new shipment of pot in the mail. The director of the school overheard him, and Dave was promptly expelled. 

I walked into our dorm room to find Dave packing up all his stuff. I asked what he was doing and he told me the story. He was crying. Despite our differences, I liked Dave, and I felt kind of bad that he was leaving. But I didn’t cry.

Two years later, I was attending the building trades program at Alfred State College in New York. There were a whole lot more students there, and a lot of wild parties. I managed to live within that culture, and be friendly with everyone, without being a part of the bacchanalian revelry. I was also, by then, less prone to being surprised by the immoral behavior of so many people. But one friend from my building trades class unwittingly shocked me one day...

Mark was a quintessential American boy. Close-cut hair. Nice smile. Handsome. Great personality. He told me he had won the national soapbox derby in Akron Ohio when he was younger. I was impressed. We got along well in building trades class. 

When Mark told me he smoked pot, I was a little surprised, but he was more surprised to learn that I didn’t. Then he said something that I’ve never forgotten… 

“You gotta stop by my dorm room sometime and see my bong.” 

I had never heard of a bong. I said, “Your what!?”

“My bong, man. I've got the biggest bong on campus. It’s almost five feet high. You gotta check it out!”

Well, I never did check out that bong.

My only other memorable experience with marijuana was also at Alfred State. I had a car of  my own by then and was driving a bunch of friends back to the main campus from a job site where we had been working. Three guys in the back seat and one in the front with me. The trip was maybe ten miles. Half way into it I smelled pot, looked in the rearview mirror, and saw they were lighting up a joint. 

I’m an easy-going guy. It takes a lot to upset me. But that upset me. And they knew it real quick. I don’t recall what I said, but I was saying it loud and fast and I’m sure my face was red. I pulled over and told the three of them to get out. They got rid of the joint and were real apologetic. I drove them back to school but it was a quiet ride the rest of the way.

As you can see, I’ve pretty much always been a square. I realize now that it was the grace of God that gave me the inner resolve to “purpose in my heart” that I would not do a lot of foolish and self-destructive things that so many young people do, like smoke pot.

Now, after having told you all of that, you might be surprised to know that I really don’t have any big objection to the legalization of marijuana. Maybe I should, but I don’t.

Obviously, there is a whole counterculture that is addicted to pot. Their lives revolve around pot. It owns them. There is a bad spiritual dimension to smoking pot. And it is obviously (unless you are hooked) not a healthy thing to do.

What might not be obvious is the political aspect of this. Anyone who has read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World may see similarities between pot and “soma.” Here is a description of soma from the Brave New World Wikipedia entry...

Beyond providing social engagement and distraction in the material realm of work or play, the need for transcendence, solitude and spiritual communion is addressed with the ubiquitous availability and universally endorsed consumption of the drug soma. In the book, soma is a hallucinogen that takes users on enjoyable, hangover-free "holidays". It was developed by the World State to provide these inner-directed personal experiences within a socially managed context of State-run "religious" social clubs. The inculcated affinity for the State-[sanctioned] drug, as a self-medicating comfort mechanism in the face of stress or discomfort, thereby eliminates the need for religion or other personal allegiances outside or beyond the World State. 

Pretty wild, eh? 

In the final analysis, I see the widespread move to legalize pot as just another indication that America is in spiritual decline. 

Nevertheless, like I said, I have no big objections to legalizing pot (it appeals to my libertarian inclinations).  I’m not going to vote for legalization (if I ever get a chance to vote on it here in New York), but I’m also not going to expend a lot of energy working against it. It’s just not that big of a deal in my mind because there are so many other matters that strike me as more important. There are “bigger fish to fry” as the American empire collapses.

By the way, Kevin Swanson, seems to think pretty much the same way. Check out the radio program at: Legalization of Pot in California.