Cannabis Users: Stop With The Smug, Already

When viewing articles about smoking - particularly at the Guardian, funnily enough - I've always found it quite baffling to see some of the most vitriolic anti-smoking commenters are avid fans of cannabis.

The only possible justification I can see for their stance is that they are either:

a) Pretty pissed off that tobacco is legal and cannabis isn't.

b) Under the impression that their drug is 'cool' but tobacco no longer is.

or c) Supremely confident that state-funded bansturbators will leave them alone.

Well, it looks like that last one could be off up the swanee, according to the Indy.

Is this the 'tobacco moment' for cannabis?

For cannabis it is the "tobacco moment". The long-suspected link between consuming cannabis and developing schizophrenia has been repeatedly confirmed by recent studies. Observers say that for cannabis the present moment is similar to that half a century ago when scientific proof of a connection between smoking tobacco and cancer became so strong that no serious doctor or scientist could deny it.

What a bummer, man.

This is just the first of what the Indy declares will be a 'four-part series' too, so there is a long way to go yet on this. If correct in their conclusions, it could be the beginning of the end for the more enlightened thinking of jurisdictions such as Portugal, Mexico and - more recently - Colorado and Washington.

At time of writing, the comment count just rocketed past the 1,000 mark, many of which are tokers stupidly pointing the finger at alcohol as being more harmful ... as if that is going to help them.

Perhaps, then, it's timely to yet again quote Crampton's inspired words from 2010.

It's like a bunch of folks on the scaffolds complaining that the other guy's noose isn't quite tight enough. Y'all might instead direct your attention to the hangman sometime and try helping each other cut those ropes.

You see, the only way cannabis users are going to help themselves is by rejecting the state's assumed legitimacy for interfering unduly in the voluntary consumption of any product, whether healthy or unhealthy. Prohibition never works, we know that. But - as John Stuart Mill once said - each measure against tobacco, alcohol, fast food, salt, sugar (the munchies, anyone?) or any other popular substance "for the sole purpose of making them more difficult to be obtained, is a measure differing only in degree from their entire prohibition.".

How cannabis users think that calling for more prohibition of legal products will somehow make government legalise the sale and regulation of cannabis is anybody's guess.

I sometimes tire of repeating it, but unless you're prepared to defend all liberties - as I do, incidentally, for any potheads reading - against the collective arseholes who want to restrict them, stop bleating when someone sets out to demonise your particular preference.