4/20

There are a few things that I'm passionate about and will take a stand on. There are only a few because being that passionate about too many things is tiring. Arguing about the same things over and over with no resolution is not my idea of a good time. That being said, I will argue and educate and attempt to persuade to my opinion until I'm blue in the face about two things in particular: Adoption, and drugs. I've already said what I need to say about adoption. Guess it's time to cover the other one.

April 20th is a big day for a lot of reasons...and not all of them good. It's a bad day in the history books. April 20th is Hitler's birthday. It's also the day that two teens who felt like the world owed them something went on a murderous rampage in a high school in Colorado. For today's generation, 4/20 is also national pot smoking day. I bet a lot of parents either didn't know or didn't remember it.

I don't know when this whole "national pot smoking day" began and I really don't care. The only thing I can find came from Wikipedia saying it started in San Rafael, California, by a group of high school students in 1971. Guess it fits...that being hippie era and all. From whatever beginning it had, it's grown into a giant monster of a thing that has "observances" throughout the country and many political ulterior motives. Among todays young adults and teenagers and even some parental units, 4/20 has morphed into the day it is acceptable to smoke weed. Apparently, it's the day we all throw our good sense and brains out the window for a day.

Most of these people would have you believe that smoking pot is less harmful than drinking alcohol. Here's my response to that: A-anything that you put in your body that alters your state of mind is harmful, and B-you must be smoking pot and want it legalized so you don't feel guilty for breaking the law. I would also say that nearly everyone has to admit that everyone reacts differently to different substances. While it might be harmless for a teenage girl still in high school with no access or desire to hit anything harder, there is always that person that marijuana is a stepping stone for.

Marijuana is the most commonly abused illicit drug in the United States. The active ingredient in Marijuana, the one that causes the mellowing and the munchies and the mind altering effects, is called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. I imagine that with this drug being so widely used and abused, doctors and scientists have done a great deal of research on it and it's effects. Here's what I've found and I'll link to the website I found it on:
1. There are many methods of marijuana consumption. When it's smoked, the chemical THC passes quickly into the lungs and bloodstream which then transports the chemical to the organs and the brain.
2. There are specific parts of our brains that are receptive to the THC. These parts of our brain, when mixed with THC, react on a cellular level, creating the "high" experienced when smoking pot.
3. According to this research, the highest concentration of the most susceptible parts of our brains are focused in the places that influence pleasure, memory, thinking, concentrating, sensory and time perception, and coordinated movement. Ever seen someone high try to remember something? Yeah. It's not a pretty picture.
4. People who smoke weed frequently have a much harder time shaking the effects it has on their brains. This results in, for lack of a better term, a pot head. I know most kids and young adults know the term, but for clarifications sake, a pot head is someone who is unintelligent and can't do anything too complicated if their life depended on it because they just aren't all there.
5. If abused extensively, no matter what "free thinkers" tell you, marijuana can have the same addictive effects that any harder drug has.
6. In this study, it also says that chronic marijuana abuse in younger people may be a marker for other more severe genetic problems including schizophrenia.

That's only the effects this "harmless" drug can have on the brain. It also affects our bodies. Marijuana is known to increase heart rates by 20-100%, making the likelihood of a heart attack in a marijuana smoker increase 4.8 times within the first hour of smoking. Marijuana smoke contains 50-70% more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco smoke. Have you ever seen someone smoke weed? Bill Cosby does a pretty funny routine on it. To get the full effect of the drug, a user must hold the smoke in longer than they would for a regular cigarette, thus increasing the exposure to the harmful substances withint the marijuana. In recent studies, out of 450 people who smoked either marijuana or cigarettes, the weed smokers who did not smoke tobacco cigarettes missed more days of work and had more health problems than those who didn't smoke marijuana.

These are the facts that I got at this http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/infofacts/marijuana website. Anyone that reads this blog knows that I don't blog about things I haven't had exposure too. In that vein, here is what I've learned through exposure and observation in my own life:

No matter what anyone tells you, you cannot predict what will happen to a person who does not know their own mind. Whether it's cocaine, heroine, alcohol, or marijuana, a mind altering drug means that the person who took the drug does not have full control of their brains or bodies. Everyone reacts differently to different substances and you cannot say that one persons reaction will be the same across the board. My experiences with marijuana have been one extreme.

My life was altered by this "harmless" drug when I was 19 years old. A man came into my life who was a recovering drug addict. We dated. Two months after we started dating, he started smoking weed again. He said it was to help him calm down and that pot was the only drug he was going to be using. I believed him. Silly me. For this person, weed was a stepping stone. For everyone he associated with in that world, weed was just the vehicle. There were two people I knew in this man's life who were always happy when he started smoking weed again...both were drug dealers. After a month of just weed, a lot of which I'd catch him smoking, take from him, and throw away, the weed lost it's usefulness for him. It no longer gave him the high he was looking for. He had to use harder stuff. In his case, he started using crystal meth. For anyone that doesn't know, meth is known as poor man's cocaine. Take all of the cleaning products from under your kitchen sink and mix them together a certain way and you have what these addicts are putting into their bodies. Or...just get the battery acid out of your car battery. It's just as effective.

The end result of this relationship was I lost a very important part of my life that I will never get back. I was also forever altered in that I know more about the drug world than I ever wanted too. I know this is kind of an extreme, but you don't get through to some people by sugar coating reality.

The bottom line is that this is reality: Marijuana is not harmless. There's a reason it is illegal. I saw a comic on Facebook today that illustrated a man drunk and a man enjoying a high from marijuana. The drunk commited several heinous acts. He was prone to violence, raped a woman, and displayed himself to cops...solidifying his stupidity. The man who was high was relaxed, giggly and had munchies. Those are possibilities. Not everyone who gets drunk has that severe of a reaction. Not everyone who gets high is that mellow. You cannot predict how individuals will react...whether it's a drug or alcohol. Don't sit there and try and convince me that weed is harmless. It's not. And anyone who says otherwise is probably trying to sell you some or get you to buy some for them.

Know what your kids are being exposed to. Talk to them. Find out what they know and fill in the blanks. The best way to stop this epidemic of stupidity is to stop allowing people to be stupid and float along in their lives with no accountability. Their are consequences to every choice. Educate your children on what they need to know so their choices and the consequences from them are beneficial to them.

And y'all...don't be stupid.