On Good Morning America, Saturday the 27th of December, the news stream at the screen's bottom read, "Study: Marijuana use in Colorado has risen."
     Really?  Someone or some organization commissioned a study on that subject?  They didn't
bother using deductive reasoning to figure out that a popular commodity like pot, once legalized, will be smoked and eaten more and more by a population freed from having to worry about police busts? 
     I've been around stoned people.  I've been stoned.  I've had idiotic conversations with stoned people.  I've had intelligent conversations with them.  I know firsthand that being stoned a lot can create over time a sense of what's-the-use-I-may-as-well-do-it-later. 
     In Colorado I suspect that that procrastinating spirit has risen along with legalization.  One advantage to the pot smoker who lives in a non-legal state is that the challenge of purchasing pot, especially during a dry spell, can delay the satisfaction of exchanging bills for a fresh bag--a lesson in patience.  The purchase, too, must be done in secret, but in Colorado pot is bought openly.  It's easy, there's no dodging of the law.  If one can go to the store and buy pot to smoke or eat, it's inevitable that usage of the substance will increase over time.  If it was illegal to walk on the sidewalk, except in Colorado say, citizens elsewhere would tend to avoid the sidewalk, unless a few daring people were willing to chance being seen by passing cops.  In Colorado, though, walking on the sidewalk this past year, let's say, has been legal, so citizens there go apeshit with it, and on Good Morning America the news stream might read, "Study: Colorado sidewalks walked on more frequently since sidewalk ban ended."
     I don't suggest that the persons who studied the frequency of marijuana use in Colorado since it's been legal there are idiots, or that they were stoned when they conducted research, but if they received a grant to report on the obvious, what sane and sober group gave them the money?  Is the study's real purpose the generation of evidence to show legalization's malign impact on the people of Colorado?  While alcohol- and cigarette-related deaths in America continue to kill more people every year than could have fit inside the World Trade Center, marijuana remains a bugbear to straight society.  Booze is fine, booze is sexy, beer is a couple on a tropical beach, pizza is Peyton Manning hawking a pie covered with Fritos, portions in restaurants and on TV ads couldn't fit inside most people's heads. 
     Marijuana, then, not booze, not cigarettes, not Pentagon arms dealing, not political corruption, not unhealthy eating and drinking, not the daily government propaganda, not scoundrels among the wealthy and the political elite, is the problem.  Here's a study: it says the people of Colorado are smoking and eating a lot of pot.  Those lazy fuckers.  Do you want all of America to turn out like that?
     For the record, I used to smoke pot, especially in the 1990's.  Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, were also pot smokers.  Bush also used cocaine and was AWOL for a prolonged period during his service with the Alabama Air National Guard.  Obama smoked cigarettes, and maybe still does.  Clinton, apart from the pot, fucked women other than his wife. 
     Everyone is flawed.

                                                                              Vic Neptune