Is it illegal to be a dope?

As a person who has never smoked pot, but who grew up with the Reagan administration's lame anti-drug propaganda campaign (seriously, it was lame. Kids today think those Truth ads are lame, but they have no idea the crap we had to put up with), I guess I have as much right as anyone to an opinion on the legalization of marijuana.

Now, as a liberal college graduate, it's pretty much expected that I am in the "legalize it" camp. And I guess I am. The War on Drugs is costing taxpayers millions of dollars, filling our jails with nonviolent offenders, and putting a lot of law enforcement agents in serious danger. Not to mention the racism and corruption below the surface. If it were legal here, then we could grow it here and not send any more money to drug kingpins abroad. We could tax it, we could more easily control it, and we could more accurately monitor it. For all these reasons, pot should be legal.

But with all the focus on whether or not pot should be legalized, let's not forget to ask ourselves one important question: Is smoking pot cool? I don't think it is. And I don't mean that in the anti-drug commercial way, where a person who is way more lame than the burnouts the ad is aimed at says, "smoking dope is for dopes." I mean, there was a time when pot was cool. Way cool. Unfortunately for current-day smokers, that time was called the 1960s. It was the drug of the decade, the way cocaine was the drug of the 70s. But those days are long gone, kids.

Let's be real here. People's grandmas smoke pot. I love my grandma, but I don't usually look to her for guidance in the way of what's cool. Plus, there's no shock value to it anymore. If you're smoking pot to stick it to the man, just get your nose pierced. Straight America will never get over the sight of metal protruding from flesh. Not even Jesus is freaked out by pot (see right). If you smoke it just to feel good, just know that you do it at a cost. I don't mean the chance of getting caught and being subject to the extreme drug laws in NY state. I mean nobody likes being around you when you're high. Most people are more fun to be around when they've had a little to drink, but when people are high they're almost never any fun to be around.

If anything, the fact that it's illegal is the only thing cool about smoking it. So let's make it legal to buy and smoke marijuana, and maybe people will stop doing it.