More Evidence

Still more evidence of the decline of our once-great nation was provided in this morning's USA Today.

The gist of the article is that marijuana is no big deal.  Singers and actors are smoking the weed every day without consequence.  So I suppose the suggestion is, why even bother trying to enforce laws against it?

First and foremost, because it isn't harmless.  That old caricature of the 26 year old guy who is still unemployed and living in his Mom's basement, where he does nothing but toke and play video games?  It's more true than caricature.

I saw it among my peers in college.  Friends who fell in with the pot-head crowd stopped going to class, didn't bother to study or do homework, and flunked out of their program.  Often all this happened in the course of a single term.  These guys went from concientious, hard-working, pretty good students to slackers in the course of only a few short weeks.  Their attitudes changed, even their personalities seemed to change.  They just stopped caring.

Then there's the crime aspect.  All those murders on the Mexican border and in the big cities aren't over petty jealousies or old-fashioned gang turf wars.  They are killing each other over control of the drug trade. 

Irresponsible messages like the one pushed in the USA Today article are contributing to the problem.  They make pot smoking sound cool and suggest there really isn't going to be any consequence to doing so.  Why not be like your favorite actor or singer and start toking?  Nobody's going to arrest you, and you will be considered cool by your peers.

What value is it to anyone to learn that singers like Beyonce and Justin Bieber are big-time pot-heads?  Or that actors from Matthew McConaughy to Kristin Stewart are well-known tokers.  The article is basically an advertisement for the legalization group called NORML.

I think Colorado and Washington are already finding out what a huge mistake they've made in passing laws legalizing the drugs.  And the California fig leaf law permitting "medical marijuana" was a joke even before it passed.

This adds fodder to the previous post to illustrate the destruction of American society.  Pretty soon the welfare state will topple and sonny will get kicked out of Mom's basement and we'll have millions of people incapable of fending for themselves.  Will they starve to death?  Certainly it will be difficult for them to fend off the munchies when there is no longer any source of funds available to run to the grocery store or call the pizza delivery guy.  Oh, the torture!