Sending a Message

As the legislative battle over medical marijuana spreads across the country, the arguments are heating up. They are, however, different this year. Very few seem to be debating the acknowledged therapeutic utility of marijuana, but two arguments remain.

One is the argument of futility considering the overarching reach of Federal law. This one is hard to counter except by saying that reform has to begin somewhere, and a little is better than nothing at all.

The other argument against medical marijuana makes my blood boil: "We can't legalize medical use because it would send a wring message to the kids." An old sayings holds that patriotism is the last refuse of scondrels. After years of working with the First Amendment and sexually explicit materials and with drug laws, I would propose a variant of that saying: "Sending a message to the kids is the last refuse of the hypocrit."

What message would legalizing marijuana for medical use send to the kids anyway? "Come on, smoke grandma's cancer medicine; it will make you cool"? "We are going to deny people their medications, leaving them in pain or dying, just so we can maintain the propaganda that marijuana is bad"? "You're so dumb you can't see obvious truth if we just tell you a weak fairy tale"?

Kids are smarter than that. They use their eyes and ask questions, and see what is going on around them. They have pretty good bullshit detectors, triggered, perhaps, by Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

They know something is wrong when we tell them not to use stimulants, but we force millions of their comrads to take Ritalin or amphetamine for ADHD.

Kids can handle the truth; sometimes they need a little more explanation or a little guidance in applying it, but they can handle truth. Isn't that what we hope education helps them with in the first place.

Maybe we should worry about whether we have been sending the same kinds of propagandistic messages to ourselves. Having we been telling ourselves the truth about drugs, or has our government been 'sending us a message' because we are too immature to handle the truth?

Let's try telling the kids the truth this time. They can handle it. Or is it that we are afraid we can't handle the truth ourselves?