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.

One Billion Tobacco Deaths? Big Whoop

I read an article a couple of days ago that claimed the 21^st century will see one billion people die from tobacco-related causes. One billion. The American Cancer Society and World Health Organization see this as a huge problem; one worthy of being declared an "emergency."

I say screw 'em.

I don't mean that in a bad way, but seriously, one billion people? Over the course of a century? That's not too bad, if you ask me. In fact, it helps out another "problem" that the World Health Organization is worried about: overpopulation. Not only that, these smokers are dying from something that, in all likelihood, THEY WANT TO DO. It's not like one billion people are getting run over by drunk drivers or getting thrown off of cliffs. It's smoking, which is an acquired habit, and which they can quit if they really wanted to (as a former smoker, I feel entitled to say that). But you know what, most of them LIKE IT.

I say let 'em smoke.

One billion people over 100 years really isn't that bad of a number. That's about 10 million deaths per year on average, which is less than 5% of the American population. Given that the birth rate is still high enough to blow the death rate out of the water, what is everyone so concerned about? Besides, wouldn't we all like a little more elbow room? I know those living in Los Angeles, New York, Seoul, Mexico City, Tokyo, and all of those other crazy places sure as hell would.

Now, I'm not claiming that the world is overcrowded, or is anywhere near it's "sustenance limit," but the fact remains that in 1950, the world's population was only about 2.5 billion. It is currently estimated to be about 6.5 billion. Think about that. Thanks to medicine, technology, and the like, we went from taking THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of years to reach 2.5 billion to taking only 55 years to add another 4 billion more. And, at the current growth rate, the world is expecting to hit 9.2 billion by 2050.

Shit... let 'em smoke, let 'em die. Like I said, at least it'll be from something chosen, and not some fucked up accident.