Sunday, December 27, 2009

Will Miss #98 - the comically misinformed about drugs


If you've ever seen the over the top cult movie "Reefer Madness", you might chuckle at the sort of rubes in the 40's and 50's who would buy the notion that pot smoking could have such an amazingly distorting effect on you. Well, "Reefer Madness" is in the ballpark of the thinking that most Japanese people have about pot. They believe that it is in the same league as cocaine and heroin in the pantheon of addictive and destructive drugs. As misinformation goes, this is pretty harmless to society, so it's not the sort of ignorance that has appreciable negative consequences.

I'll miss this little throwback to the 50's drug mentality, and the look of incredulity on people's faces when you try to tell them that marijuana usage is less harmful than alcohol consumption.