Smoking Marijuana

I BEGAN SMOKING MARIJUANA in January or February of 1978, intrigued by it, inticed by a friend of mine who was devoted to it, and seemed healthy, happy, and successful. Not so much "peer pressure" as peer influence, or role modeling. Forty eight years later, I still smokeit, and still enjoy it as much. Even that occasional and well known paranoid feleing that comes with it is a bit of a thrill. I know, deep down, that all is well, I am fine. The fact that it has largely been legalized and is available is most states is a vast improvement both from a sociological and criminal justice point of view. t raises tax revenue too. As Lincoln said: "Prohibition gues beyond the bounds of reason, in that it makes a crime our of thngs that are not crimes, and attempts to control a man's appetites by legislation. Prohibition strikes a blow at the very foundation upon which our republic was founded." I laugh and smile nostagically when I remember how we used to hide behind barns and in closets to smoke, and spray our bedrooms and cars with Lysol after a toke or two. I can think of many dead friends who would've been better off smoking pot than drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. I would have more living friends, with livers and lungs intact. True, smoking anything does not help one's lungs. Marijuana, however, famously expands the air sacs, cleans out the accumulated mucus, and was once the best and most commonly used treatment for asthma. When I was two years old, I had asthma so bad that my parents asked whether I would live, as I lay cold, frightened and lonely inside an "oxygen tent" in the late nineteen fifties, waiting for the world and its medicine to catch up to my needs. Eventually, it did. I probably love marijuana more now, or at least as much, as I did back then, in the faded jean jacket seventies. I have always and still do treat marijuana like fine wine, to be savored in small quantities, shared with friends at special occasions, such as hanging out with said friend(s). As far as I know nobody has ever died or been rendered chronically ill by smoking pot, although there are certainly people who disagree, mostly priggish conservative types. The fact that now I still love and enjoy it but can take or leave it is the perfect balance for me. I have to drive fifty mmiles across a state line to purchase it legally, which is a hassle if marijunnas is my only motivation. But I can make the drive, and visit my hometown, old high school friends, and my family too, killing several birds with a single stone, as it were. The shrunken asthmatic lungs i was born with have, over the decades, morhped into a deep thick chest with big, healty lungs, which require me, at rest, to inhale only about four times every minute. Daily exercise helps too, of course. Even when striding along at a good jogging clip on treadmill or wooded trail, my lungs cycle through in steady, slow form, not at all strained. I have to run a good healthy sprint to get myself breathing rapidly and deeply. I have noticed, for a long time, that marijuana sometimes dulls my ambition, makes me slugghish, and lazy. A little bit of that goes a long way, as I, like most Americans, smoke or no smoke, prefer being productive. Sometimes, it fuels my ambition and productivity. Go figure. With a bit of self dicsipline, I manage to manage that. I am not the sort to make dramatic, blanket declarations of intent, like "On January first I shall cease smoking, forever." Nor do I make New Year's Resolutions genrally.. I simply decide what to do, and do it, any day of the week or year. As Goethe said: "There is no sureer way to blunt a resolution than to keep talking about it." And, as we all know, talk is cheap.