Marijuana is legal here in 2 months - please help

[NNadir]

12. I think I got the "joke."

For the record, I didn't find Cheech and Chong all that funny. I guess you had to be in a certain state to do so.

I have worked as a medicinal chemist, so I think I understand "effective and safe," since I am still involved, at least, peripherally, in clinical trials, including clinical trials involving opioid addiction. Nobody's cheering for the Sacklers. I met, and interacted with Purdue scientists; in the end they proved to be like "scientists" at Phillip Morris, the company that I hold responsible for my father's early death. Unsurprisingly some of them were real assholes.

My email every morning contains several references to cannabis analytical issues, some of which are quite ugly. Occasionally, when facing commentary here in response to the remarks I make on this subject - which always raises objections often passionate objections - about whether "pot is 'good' for you," I refer to the scientific literature which is quite rich with commentary on cannabis and its effects, and to which I generally have pretty complete access. I find the references disturbing, particularly with respect to the effects on young people, since there is evidence that "developmental" phases of neurological development don't really end until the mid twenties.

Nor am I arguing that Cannabis shortens lifetimes, but I would note that the anecdote that George Burns lived to be 100 proves that cigar smoking is "good for you." Anecdotal accounts can, and often do, get people in real trouble. This morning, in the JAMA update there was a paper on facial paralysis from RNA vaccines, which some people were running around saying was a "thing." There was, according to the authors of the paper, no statistical indication that this was in fact "a thing." Anyone who points to "facial paralysis" anecdotes to justify not getting a vaccine is a fool.

I'm sorry, but I don't consider there to be any "reasonable debate" about cannabis being "good for your health." My sons are in their twenties, and I would be extremely upset if I found out they were smoking pot. For the record, my oldest son is a big advocate for legalization, which is not to say that he is a user. We have this argument all the time, both seriously and jokingly. I would know if he were a stoner, since anyone in my generation is fully aware of what being stoned is.

It's not like I have never spoken to a stoned person. Like I said, I've been in rooms full of them. Now that I am reaching the end of my life, I wish I could have those hours back to have done something useful and meaningful.

For me, it's depressing when a really stoned person struggles to find the next word and one has to wait for it, although most of the time it really isn't worth waiting for...

Telling me that Carl Sagan smoked a joint every day also doesn't impress me. Even if as a scientist he was, in spite of that, a good scientist, even an excellent scientist - although media star scientists are often in my opinion "too much," don't ever get me started on Michio Kaku - this anecdote does not show that he may have been a better scientist if he didn't smoke pot.

As for Bob Dylan...

I used to play a lot of Bob Dylan songs in clubs when I was a stupid kid. I still know most of the lyrics. Sometimes the images were quite beautiful, but they were generally nonsense, to Jan Wenner's shock and dejection, about nothing at all. One song I played a lot was "Visions of Joanna," which according to Bob Dylan was not "about" Joan Baez. As it happened, playing that song, as well as "Desolation Row" was always the um, "high point" of my evening "gigs" such as they were.

I don't think it matters at all for the present context, but Bob Dylan has always been cagey about his work. There really isn't a deeper point in many cases of what they are "about." "Visions of Joanna" is a beautiful song, and it played a role in my life, since I played it for someone I love more than myself, and it made a difference. We can speculate whether it was about Joan Baez specifically, but it is clearly "about" a former lover, one of whom is known in Bob Dylan's case to have been Joan Baez. To me, it seems transparent, particularly the third verse, about "little boy lost." What does it matter?

The cultural context in which "Rainy Day Woman" was played loudly when I was a kid is clear enough.

This verse is clearly not about Hebrew Biblical judicial practices:

Well, they’ll stone you and say that it’s the end

Then they’ll stone you and then they’ll come back again

They’ll stone you when you’re riding in your car

They’ll stone you when you’re playing your guitar

Yes, but I would not feel so all alone

Everybody must get stoned

I know that many people assume that Jesus was God, but I can't recall any Biblical precognizant verses in any of his "sermons" about Buicks or Toyotas. I don't think Jesus ever spoke about Gibson Les Pauls or Stratocasters. Rather many of Jesus's sermons seem to be about sheep herding and fishing. Maybe that's why, as a child, I was required to spend so much time reading the Bible. My father loved fishing; sheep herding, not so much.

I'm not familiar enough with Bob Dylan's entire catalogue to know whether he ever wrote a song about sheep. Dylan may have wrote "about" fish. I don't know. I think Dylan once had a thing for Jesus. Where that went, and how it compares to Joan Baez, I'll leave that to people more interested than I am.

Whether Dylan wrote about sheep or not, nevertheless, there were and are a lot of sheep in my generation. My generation proved to be as disappointing as hell, and I think that future generations will have hell to pay because of us. There are many things that should have been at least as important to us as marijuana laws and marijuana use seem to have been. We were a failed generation, and as I often say in different contexts, "history will not forgive us, nor should it."

If there's any consolation about us, we raised this current generation now coming into adulthood. For all the crap thrown at them by old farts in my age group, these kids are as impressive as hell, much smarter, over all, than we had any right to claim. Mostly they seem pretty sober. Like any generation, they include some asses, but overall, they're fabulous. I regret what we did to them.