Weed: Why All The Buzz?

That Michael Phelps partakes of weed should, several days since the publication of his bong’s Kodak moment, already be old news.

Pretty much everyone agrees that marijuana is not a big deal, right?

But that’s just it!

So committed are we all in our determination to be blasé about weed that, ironically, Phelps’ photo op has actually become real news.

In the collective rush to be open and millennial – to view marijuana as a fact of life – weed has become, in the hipster parlance, kind of a big deal.

In the days since Phelps’ bong made its public debut, the already overplayed “legalize it” refrain has intensified, sending even the most devoted fuddy-duddys scrambling to declare their nonchalance over a drug whose ubiquity has essentially rendered it meaningless.

Here’s the thing: That’s about as anti-intellectual of an argument as can be made … which may or may not be incidental, considering marijuana’s appetite for brain cells.

Seriously, though. Why do otherwise insightful people quiver at the mention of marijuana, eager to proclaim their ennui with a drug that, only a few decades ago, was at the center of an entire counterculture?

Why has weed gotten such a bad rap – a reputation for being dull, harmless, no big deal?

And why, on a related matter, does America lose its effing mind at the idea of some athlete shooting steroids – a protracted national freak-out that involves, invariably, Congress, the media, half the country’s blog whores, and every last sportsman?

The devout acceptance of marijuana can only be understood via its curious juxtaposition with the dogged rejection of, most saliently, steroids.

One drug is acceptable; the other is not.

The reason for this is because one drug winds you up and the other winds you down.

Not so long ago, it was cool to be wound up. You may have been a cokehead, sure, but damn you were industrious!

Think about it: The eighties – the cocaine, probably – brought us MTV, Ronald Reagan, and Alf (and me, actually, though that may or may not be cocaine-attributable).

Productivity was “where it was at” back then, even if it was all a ride on the wave of the dopamine surge.

Now, that wave is all about passivity: Go with the flow, coast, “chillax.”

Drugs are socially acceptable as long as their purpose is not to enhance but to dull (it’s called a “blunt” for a reason, people).

The feverish national acceptance of marijuana is, despite itself, evidence of provinciality rather than an indication of openness.

It isn’t that we’ve come so far culturally that we’re tolerant and hip enough to accept drug use. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be a social and political crisis whenever an athlete admitted to using steroids.

Marijuana and steroids are first cousins, both synthesized to produce a particular result regardless of the artificiality. The difference is not in the artifice, but in the desired result.

No, this is not an open culture. We’re histrionically provincial – classically narrow-minded but also devotedly tolerant of exactly one pathology.

Accepting a pathology – only one, though – is adequate proof of a sweeping national tolerance.

Right now the chosen pathology happens to be marijuana use.

Forbidden fruit (plant?) no longer, weed is the last acceptable addiction standing.

While the government bans food hydrogenation, manipulates alcohol ads, holds children hostage to the BMI chart, outlaws sexy text messages, and belligerently taxes tobacco, politicians are gradually hopping aboard the “legalize weed” wagon.

Marijuana legislation is most often justified in terms of the importance of hands-off governance – at a time when the government’s paws are more curious than ever.

It seems that people want their government to be ferociously hands-on – except, and only except, when it comes to marijuana use.

If weed is indeed a fact of life, then another fact of life is that you can’t have your blunt and smoke it too.

Either you’re going to invite the government in all the way, or you’re going to slam the door in its face – whether or not it’s offering marijuana.

Incredibly, the actually tolerant, actually open among us are people like me – people who’ve never even once smoked marijuana, people who judge the hell out of those who do but who won’t abide that same sanctimony when it’s handed out via governmental intrusion.

And speaking of me: I’ve made a hypocrite out of myself, devoting eight hundred words to a topic that, as I said at this article’s beginning, is no big deal.

Getting back to Michael Phelps, which is where we began, the only thing I care to say about that particular picture is that it’s enough to provoke sympathy pangs … of hunger.

Apparently even writing about weed can give you the munchies, a possibility which the government should consider the next time the legislative agenda includes marijuana legislation alongside obesity taxation.