Medical Marijuana’s Box Canyon and the “Dreaded High”

Marijuana legalization is not inevitable
ev·i·ta·ble adjective \ˈe-və-tə-bəl\
Definition of EVITABLE: capable of being avoided

It seems one of the best places to look for evidence of a trend of awakening to the realities of marijuana legalization may be in the pot legalizers’ own literature.

Their own original playbook was:
1) decriminalization — which played on sympathies for the  unjustly incarcerated, lowered stigma and consequences, and dramatically drove up availability and ease of use,
2) medicalization — which ingratiated the street drug into the good graces of the mainstream with appeals to sympathies for the profoundly ill, and that further lowered perception of harm and further increased use — though because these laws were written to deceive they brought defacto legalization, and now,
3) a mantra of “inevitability” of the march toward full-blown legalization and enormous profits as a newly enriched pot lobby funds its messaging among online youth audiences and lawmakers.

Here is video of the early organizers of the legalization movement. Laughing about the scam they intend to pull on the American people, and screaming “because I like to get high” doesn’t sound so good in the midst of a 21st Century addiction and overdose epidemic that’s killing more Americans now that either car crashes or gun violence.

But full-blown legalization is NOT inevitable.

The “Box Canyon” theory was a cautionary idea put forth by chief legalization strategists. They feared that if they called this street drug medicine, then the thinking public might just be smart enough to demand real, authentic, American-style medical oversight of potential beneficial cannabis-derived drugs that don’t get you high, and with full warnings about side-effects and
contraindications — the opposite of the legalizer agenda.

Russ Belville, in his article, “Alepsia” is the Latest Proof of Medical Marijuana’s Box Canyon”, speaks pejoratively of “the dreaded high”, as if only crazy people would think routinely getting high is a bad idea. And that getting young people high — the inevitable outcome of an expanded pot market — is an even worse idea.

Let’s talk about just what “the dreaded high” does for American mental health if spread more broadly across a population of 315 million Americans.

We can do the math on IQ losses, productivity losses, treatment costs, life potential losses, long-term physical health harms, progressive addiction issues, etc.

But an authentic story of the real harm and loss connects more viscerally with
the average person:
— the one boy who lost his life on Spring Break in Colorado,
— another boy who came back East after freshman year in CA knowing he was addicted to pot, and who OD’d at a concert that summer of 2011 before he got a treatment bed,
— the boy who murdered his girlfriend in a psychotic rage he says was precipitated by his pot addiction.

These boys had one important factor in common: they were all 19 years old.

Gifted. And gone before the world could ever benefit from what the rest of their productive lives might have brought to us.

That’s the deal with “the dreaded high”. Every mother’s worst nightmare.

These real life stories are all around us. It’s time to tell them. It’s time to connect the dots.

It is time to box these careless recreational drug enthusiasts back into their own freely chosen corner and far from mainstream American kids too easily taken in by a drug pusher’s version of “recreation”.

States are getting smarter. Let’s hope its not too late.