Seeing sweet grannies and grandpas lining up in Colorado to buy marijuana is like something out of a futuristic movie comedy.
Can this really be happening?
Yes, indeed, it can and it is. There are long lines of people of every age ever since Colorado legalized marijuana, which went into effect Jan. 1.
The grandpas and grannies standing in those lines, which surprised many people, shouldn’t surprise us at all, considering those senior citizens were probably in their late teens or early 20s when “pot” was common during the 1960s’ “Hippy Era.” Back then, many parties, outdoor gatherings and dormitories often had the slight pungent reek in the air of burning “weed.”
Should marijuana be legalized? The voters in Colorado certainly thought so. In recent years, the weed has been semi-legalized for medical purposes because it seems to have a beneficial effect on people suffering from certain medical conditions, including terminal cancer. A poll just released shows 55 percent of Americans are in favor of legalizing pot.
There is no doubt the drug should at least be decriminalized. It’s tragic how many people, many years ago, spent many years in prison just for smoking or selling pot.
Still, questions linger. Is marijuana as harmless as so many people claim? Like many other drugs, including alcohol, the active ingredients in marijuana may well have no harm on most people with moderate usage. However, just about every kind of drug has the potential to affect some people adversely. It all depends on the person and that person’s own body chemistry. There have been numerous studies done on marijuana, but the results are still inconclusive. It’s still an open question, although most do agree the abuse of alcohol has caused more misery and destruction than all other drugs combined. However, just because alcohol is dangerous does not make marijuana necessarily harmless.
One questions is this: Should people high on marijuana get behind the wheel of a car? With their mental states affected, couldn’t some of them be just as dangerous to others as drunk drivers? And here’s another question: Can frequent smoking of marijuana rob a person’s drive and ambition and lead to a desire to take other, stronger drugs? Advocates of pot legalization laugh those questions off, but such questions deserve to be studied.
At the very least, Colorado will certainly become a kind of “test lab” for what happens when marijuana is legalized. All states should keep a close eye on that state. If statistics truly prove pot use is, in fact, harmless, fine. If not, states should think twice before they, too, legalize it.