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I’ve known that pot smokers like me were lazy, shiftless, seedy juvenile delinquent types ever since my Mom sat me down to watch my first ABC Afterschool Special. I’ve suspected that we were addle-pated dunderheads who could never muster the wit necessary to get through study hall, let alone pursue graduate degrees, raise families, hold down jobs. I have even debated whether my fellow pot smokers were enemy combatants---after all, there’s we’re fightin’ a War on Drugs! I have never suspected that the guy with whom I shared the hit from the Yoda water pipe is in cahoots with international terrorists, though. Thank goodness The Nation ran that “pot smoker=terrorist” ad on page 8 of their December 30 issue, for without it I would have remained blissfully ignorant.
Had I missed that ad, I would never have known that every “eighth” I buy “goes to people who are responsible for murder, bribery, intimidation and torture.” Wow. I just thought Groovy used that money to buy soy cheese pizzas and make repairs to his Volvo station wagon.
I would also have never known that if I stopped smoking grass, “the dealers would go away, the violence would end.” I always thought that if the hysterical prohibition on marijuana were repealed (like with alcohol on December 5, 1933) I could grow grass in my own yard, the lucrative black market would dry up, and violent criminals (and their white-collar financiers) would have to find some other vice to exploit for profit. There I go again with that questioning of received opinion. Blame that on weed, too.
I am pissed off at The Nation for running this ad---does it show?. People who commit the heinous crime of smoking pot in the privacy of their own homes already run the risk of arrest, jail time, a criminal record, loss of school loan funding. To heap insult upon injury, asserting that these same “crimeless victims” hobnob with terrorists whenever they buy a dime-bag is simply unconsciounable. That one of the nation’s last progressive magazines chose to run this ad is both disheartening and sickening.
I know that The Nation ran this pernicious ad because it needs ad revenues, so instead of condemning your decision, I will trust that the thoughtful readers of this magazine will see these ads for the spiteful, crass propaganda that they are. I encourage them to read these ads “against the grain,” to see in them the truly unasked questions about the nature of terrorism, murder, intimidation. Questions like, “Why am I compelled to give tax money to the one-sided Office of National Drug Control Policy?” or, “Why isn’t it called ‘supporting terrorism’ when my tax money goes to people ‘who are responsible for murder, …intimidation and torture’---specific examples being the CIA, the IRS and the School of the Americas, respectively?”
Just a fuzzy-headed thought,
Jason B. P. Mierek, M.A.
Husband, father, Ph.D. student, lecturer, bookseller, foole, pot smoker
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