AFEH

Hi Nekko, it’s the denial of the health risks by those that smoke is what I find strange. Never heard a cigarette smoker deny the health risks or the addictive nature of the habit. Accept a few who’ll say my grandfather smoked till he died at 85 or something. Only people who deny the health risks of alcohol are alcoholics.

With weed or whatever it’s called I know parents in their 60s who fundamentally believe their sons big time mental health problems started out with weed. I also know men in their 50s who are trying and struggling to get off of weed.

I was a teenager in the 60s when purple hearts and stuff were all the rage. I never went there at all. Last year round some friends after a meal and a few drinks the guy trying to get off of weed rolled the longest smoke I’d ever seen in my life, it was a pure work of art. Of course it got handed around and I had a go. One inhalation was enough for me. My mind was altered almost instantly, like a removal of my instinctual inhibitions. No way was I going to go there so I thanked them for a very nice evening and upped and left. This was at 2 in the morning with a five mile walk home.

I’ve discussed weed with the most seasoned campaigners for it’s legalisation. One is well known in the States having done things to deliberately antagonise the law in order to get jailed and highlight his crusade. He was “successful” in doing this three times. You know what? That guy is in his 50s and hasn’t a penny to his name, doesn’t even own a home. So what good has it done him I wonder.

All of these seasoned campaigners use as their “weapon of last resort” that weed is supposedly not as bad as tobacco or alcohol, their argument always comes down to that and defaults to the same thing. Every single time. My younger son always uses that argument.

But. The enlightened campaigners for weed’s legalisation do most certainly accept that weed has medium term exceedingly serious mental health problems for those that start when they are young. That is if they start before their brain has stopped growing. It never does in fact as cells are replaced every minute of the day. So what’s to be done? Make weed legal for those say after age 30? But that then just gives the green light for everyone under that age to go ahead with the stuff. Much like legally buying cigarettes at age 16 does for the under 16s.

As far as Holland is concerned I’ve heard arguments both for and against legalisation. Two Dutch social workers I know are very much for it. These two spent many years helping heroin addicts etc. Other Dutch people I know simply don’t like going back home because of what the legalisation of weed has done to their country.

When anybody says weed is not as bad as cigarette smoking or alcohol to me they haven’t done the research of the effects of what they are doing to themselves, especially the younger ones. And if they have done the research and still smoke when then they are in denial, very much like the person who is an alcoholic.

Bob