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But speed was fine because mods and punks used it to make clothes and music and art. The one occasion I popped an upper, I”€™d never worked more enthusiastically or efficiently at my movie-theater candy-counter job. Had those pills been easily and cheaply available, I”€™d have become a regular user.

So I became a drunk instead. I”€™ll let “€œexperts“€ puzzle out whether we writers really are congenitally more likely to be alcoholics, fiction and folklore having already ruled in the affirmative. I can tell you that the long-gone video store in my old Boystown neighborhood had a section called “€œGlamorous Alcoholics.”€ There are, however, no “€œglamorous”€ pot smokers.

Behold: Here are two cannabis-using comedians at “€œwork.”€

Now here are two alcoholics.

Any questions?

Weed makes people lazy. You”€™ll notice I didn”€™t say “€œstupid,”€ although no one can convince me that toking it adds brain cells or IQ points, either.

Many of the dedicated potheads I”€™ve known have been of average”€”even above average”€”intelligence. And they were failures. Or, at the very least (“€œmost”€?), mediocrities. They worked just hard enough to get by, and even achieved a degree of success in a constricted sphere of endeavor: hosting a long-running novelty radio show; writing a few books and teaching (part-time) at the same college forever; assistant-managing a small indie record or video store, or maybe a bike shop.

And there are fewer such “€œjobs”€ to go around all the time. Fewer still, I imagine, if America reacts to Canada’s legalization spree by slowing border crossing to a crippled crawl, free-trade agreements be damned. You”€™ve already seen the effects it’s had in Colorado and Washington state, and it’s still early days.

The only good thing about Justin’s grass obsession? It”€™ll keep him and the Liberals occupied long enough for me to place that really big gun order while I still can.

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