I must say I don’t understand how
people say that dope isn’t a gateway drug, or that dope doesn’t
hurt you. In my nine years of teaching, I have seen lots of kids
start smoking weed, and 3-4 years later be someone completely
different than who they were prior to their doja experience. Young
men who (before) smoking weed, asked to borrow books like The Road
and asked you thoughtful questions about the imagery being dark and
sad, now screaming at parents, leaving home, skipping school, living
with vagrants in ran down houses
I know the intellectual sorts say that
weed is a plant, that it’s harmless, that if alcohol is legal, than
weed should be too. And, I guess I understand that. I can’t
rationalize why alcohol is legal and weed is not. I am not arguing
those points, but I will argue that just as alcohol is harmful to the
weak willed, the immature, the angry, weed too can be just as
harmful.
A germ is not harmful, unless it finds
a scrape, cut, wound to enter. Too many of our kids have plenty of
wounds to invite addiction and imbalance. I see these kids, who are
teetering. As if they are standing on some tiny pole high in the air
amongst the clouds. Their lives are them constantly fighting for
balance, balancing the bits and pieces of their lives, just waiting
for one gentle breeze to topple them over. Weed, liquor, a bad
girlfriend or boyfriend, it could be anything.
And I guess it is obvious, that I have
specific examples in mind. I have picked crying kids up off the side
of the street, taken them home. I have had them call me, worried for
themselves, bawling in their own dissatisfaction, and I have seen
them run to weed, or worse, to salve the pain. And I have seen them
weeks, months, and years later; out of shape, dirty fingernails,
uncut hair, begging for a ride to their third job in four months,
running from drug test to drug test.
So, I will not agree when you or they
say that weed is harmless, that it doesn’t hurt anyone, that it
doesn’t lead to anything else, because it does. Missed opportunities, broken relationships, poor decision making. I have yet to see this creative savant that everyone always romanticizes, the genius on weed solving the world's problems, while creating faith changing art and sculpture. I can only go but what I have known and seen, and on that judgment scale, weed creates losers who only find more and more loss.
