Yes, I Smoked Marijuana on 4/20

April 20th — better known as “4/20” amongst a certain societal strain — was not the first time I smoked pot. And it will not be the last.

The proper response to the above admission should be: So what? We should live in a world — we can live in a world — where a column entitled “Yes, I Smoked Marijuana on 4/20” sparks no more reaction than “Yes, I Kissed My Sweetie on Valentine’s Day” or “Yes, I Had a Glass of Wine with Dinner.”

But we’re not there yet. How do we find our way? For starters, by making it clear that nothing going on here needs to be hidden.

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All humans ingest a variety of substances. Water and certain nutritional foods are the only two every one of us needs; various medicines are crucial for some. The remaining substances we take in range from the unbidden within our environment (the particulate matter from the Port, fluoride in our urban water supply) to unnecessary food additives (artificial food coloring and preservatives, high-fructose corn syrup) to the recreational (alcohol, caffeine, nicotine).

I have never been intentionally adventurous about what I put in my body. I resort to aspirin, cough syrup, or flu medication once every couple of years, and always begrudgingly. I will follow the course of a prescription only as far as a doctor advises me I must. I will accept Novocain for dental work.

But there has been more. Although my diet has become increasingly health-conscious, the range of chemicals and food products (some no doubt deleterious, others perhaps negligible in harm) I threw down my gullet over the course of my suburban, fast-food/store-shelf upbringing is harrowing to consider. Then there’s LSD, which I have taken three times. But other psychedelics (naturally occurring or manufactured), coca and its derivatives, opium and its derivatives, amphetamines, pain-killing and mood-altering pills — none of these have I sampled.

There is, however, caffeine, alcohol, processed sugar, and cannabis — four parts of my present-tense life.

Caffeine is a drug — a stimulant — and it can be poisonous. I drink coffee regularly, though less for stimulation than as a simple complement to reading, writing, klatching.

As we all know, the drug alcohol (a depressant) is a direct cause of tremendous damage. People suffer and die from one night’s excess; people suffer and die from a lifetime’s tippling. But for those of us lacking the psychological and/or genetic predisposition to alcoholism, we can enjoy liquor in moderation without issue. (There is even evidence suggesting that regularly imbibing small amounts is healthful.) And so this inebriant makes its way into celebrations, food preparation, and simple relaxation to such an extent that it is mass marketed, a multibillion-dollar business. A few bucks of those billions come from my wallet.

Processed sugar is my vice. Generally I keep my sugar intake in check, and I veer toward more natural ways to satisfying my sweet tooth, but I have yet to evince the will to resist all processed sugar. Evidence of the negative effects of processed sugar is legion and uncontroverted — and mounting seemingly by the day — and no doctor will ever advocate the consumption of processed sugar as a path to better health.

The story with cannabis is, of course, quite different. But I’m not here to enumerate the many medicinal and therapeutic benefits this plant can provide, or to discourse on how it’s a viable and natural alternative for many pharmaceutical products. I don’t even want to get into how a Harvard study found that the United States could save $7.7 billion annually in prohibition-related costs were it to legalize marijuana (never mind the billions legalization would generate),^[1] nor into how much more damage cannabis criminalization does than the worst of weed’s imagined harms. I’m just standing up to be counted.

But publicly admitting to cannabis use can be a bit risky. Yes, in the absence of a doctor’s recommendation possession of cannabis is a crime (just an infraction in California if you’ve got < 1 oz., but still…), but the broader risk may be stigmatization. Even though polls consistently show that, despite the posturing of elected officials to the contrary, Americans are coming around to believing we’d be better off legalizing marijuana for recreational use — a Gallup poll last October found the number at 50%, while an overwhelming 70% are already on board with the American Medical Association in calling for the government to get off the medpot patients’ backs — the stigma still exists, persisting party because of the reluctance of your average user publicly to cop to the use. It’s not that these people feel ashamed or that what they’re doing is wrong or harmful; it’s simply that they are letting the status quo dictate to them.

The key to killing off cannabis stigmatization is to talk openly about our usage. In 2008 a U.S. government survey estimated that 41% of Americans over 12 years of age — that is to say, over 100 million of us — had used cannabis recreationally, with one quarter of all Americans 21–25 having used it within a month of being surveyed. And because the survey was conducted by a government that regards even medicinal use as criminal, we’re safe in presuming participants underreported their usage.

I am reminded of the LGBT struggle for equality. Once upon a time — and not such a long time ago — most talked of their same-sex attraction only in hushed tones with other LGBT community members. To admit their orientation to their parents or talk about it in a public forum might have cost their credibility, their job, even their safety.

While the gay community is not completely out of these woods, the movement is toward openness, not hiding. They’re here, they’re queer — get used to it. And indeed, society is doing just that.

Admissions of marijuana use have yet to be broadcast as widely, even though a higher percentage of the populace uses cannabis than self-identifies as gay. And when those admissions come, they tend to be confined to the likes of High Times and pro-legalization rallies.

That is preaching to the choir. What we see very little of is the offhand mainstream public admission, the equivalent of the portion of a food review mentioning the wine pairing or the aperitif — the ho-hum reference, the normalizing talk.

We should not be afraid to change that. “Overgrow the government” is a favorite phrase of the legalization movement. We should overgrow public opinion; we should transform the landscape of the debate.

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I smoked marijuana on 4/20, though not because it was 4/20. I do understand the emblematic importance for a community of unjustly persecuted believers/practitioners to have its day; but “pot culture” has never interested me. I smoked marijuana on April 20th simply because on that day I happened to find myself in a place (both mentally and physically) where it was a pastime I would safely enjoy — not unlike my choice to imbibe coffee while working on this piece or to drink beer the last time my father and I got together. It wasn’t symbolic or risqué or the type of activity calling for an expenditure of police resources; it was: So what?

Cannabis, along with alcohol and caffeine, is on the list of substances of which I partake, with no shame and no concern about negative internal implications.

Processed sugar, on the other hand….