Marijuana versus Tobacco: A Great Irony

I fully believe that smoking cigarettes is bad for you. I fully believe that smoking marijuana is bad for you. And I fully believe that both should be legal, regulated as little as possible, and available on the open market to be enjoyed wherever someone (someone being an individual or a business) provides a spot for them to be enjoyed.

In a reverse of how I usually conduct myself in rants, I'll start with the conclusion: legalize marijuana and back the fuck off from tobacco. I mean, can society possibly be any more contradictory when it comes to these two topics? Given that there's currently a very strong push to legalize marijuana, and another very strong push to put the tobacco companies out of business, why aren't these two "industries" (that's in quotes because, well, marijuana isn't technically a legal industry quite yet) banding together and calling everyone (individuals and government) out on the obvious irony.

Note: I am now in pure rant mode and no longer feel it necessary to make logical transitional sense.

Here's where I'm at. I smoke cigarettes, somewhat reluctantly. I am addicted and am working on rectifying that particular shortcoming. I don't smoke marijuana and have no desire to. Not because I feel morally superior to anybody (I honestly couldn't care less), but because I'm attempting to 1) eliminate everything that I shouldn't ingest (be it tobacco or hard liquor or transfats) and 2) shift to a good, clean, wholesome, natural diet. That and, unlike most, I can't stand the smell of weed... particularly out of bongs.

Anyway, there are only two non-bullshit ways for myself to come to terms with this ironic substance-based political football: make both tobacco and marijuana completely illegal (which I don't personally support, but at least it obviates the contradiction), or make/keep them legal and allow people to fuck themselves up the way they want to fuck themselves up.

Honestly, it is far more difficult to me to name 10 people I know who don't smoke marijuana than it is for me to name 10 people who do. In fact, I can probably name 100 I know personally who smoke weed before I can name 10 friends who don't. And, you know, none of those people are criminals, drug addicts, or otherwise bad people (some are assholes, yeah, and others are idiots, but that's beside my point). They're more-or-less law-abiding, friendly, and hard-working folks.

And, no, I don't feel that marijuana is some dangerous "gateway drug" (no more so than cigarettes, beer, or... say... fetish pornography) that will lead to hardcore use of cocaine and/or heroin. And, no, I don't feel that all drugs should be legalized, either.

All that stated, I will only support the pro-weed movement if the pro-weed movement supports the pro-tobacco movement. Quid pro quo is the way to go! Not really, but you (hopefully) get my point: how the Hell can a society or counter-culture (counter-culture... love that term) support one, but not the other? It's all propaganda. We already know that both are bad for you, medicinal uses notwithstanding. But who gives a shit? Neither in-and-of-themselves leads to any sort of deviance or delinquency. And, really, they're both cheap and easy to enjoy. So who cares? Tax 'em!

Anyway, there's no real point to this other than pointing out the obvious irony. Legalize one; keep the other legal. Everyone's too uptight these days, anyway.