Different sides of the THC debate

I had a first this week.

For the first time in my whole career, I witnessed a council member walk out of a meeting.

It was something, that’s for sure.

The THC ordinance debates seem to be bringing out the worst in people. Councils that usually have easy-going people seem divided. After all, it’s a big issue with widespreadl implications.

I feel like a big issue is that council members usually don’t have an R, D, or any other party initial in their name. Yet, in a way, a lot of the talk has not been so much about the logistical side of things as it has been political.

We have one council member bringing up “Dimebag Dave” while another council member vehemently expressed personal anger at her council’s lack of acceptance of legalized THC; she implored them to pass their own ordinance instead of waiting on the state (which created this mass of confusion in the first place, thank you very much), even though there is a bill moving through the State Capitol at this moment.

But I digress.

Here’s the thing. I’ve mentioned before that the biggest issue is the stigma behind marijuana. The other issue is there isn’t sufficient data to prove marijuana is as bad as or worse than alcohol. Yet we all act like it is.

I’ve always heard the joke that the worst thing that marijuana will do to you is give you the munchies. Is Dimebag Dave worse than Darrell the Drunk? I can’t say confidently that we know.

Sure, there may be studies claiming marijuana’s effects result in fewer accidents than a pack of beer or a few glasses of wine: The Washington Post and the Good Rx website, for example, make this claim.

But the sample size is small compared to studies done on the effects of alcohol and booze-related crimes. All 50 states have legalized alcohol. Only 21 states, Washington D.C., and Guam have legalized recreational marijuana.

Here’s the thing. People like their alcohol. When the government tried making it illegal in 1920, people were so angry about it that they started bootlegging. Lots of gangsters, perhaps most famously Al Capone, made some good money building speakeasies where gambling and boozing were commonplace. Public reaction caused the US Government to end prohibition 12 years later because it was so ineffective.

Maybe that’s the same reaction now to marijuana. According to an article by the History Channel, back when states started banning it 100 years ago, people claimed it had a “Jekyll-and-Hyde” effect; it makes a calm person go crazy. An additional article by NPR also claimed that cannabis became known as marijuana to “underscore the drug’s ‘Mexican-ness’” and was allegedly meant to “play off of anti-immigrant sentiments.”

I think everybody’s biggest issue is that our own biases and opinions get in the way of seeing things as they really are: no issue is black and white. Marijuana is the perfect example of this. Maybe it’s not worse than alcohol, but is it still bad? Can it truly be a gateway drug to worse things?

Another thing I feel is making us less willing to listen to other opinions is technology. Since the dawn of time, people have kept with their tribe and have stayed firm with their beliefs. Technology has made this tendency worse. But that is another rant for another time.

I think if we just allow ourselves to have these tough conversations, we’ll get farther as a country. After all, people have been smoking marijuana for over a century now. Will making it legal change things that much?

This Day in Music

Given the topic of this column, I feel like this edition of “This Week in Music” is

On March 1, the band Pink Floyd released “The Dark Side of the Moon.” After topping the US chart, it remained within the chart for 741 weeks from 1973 to 1988, longer than any other album in history. It is the band’s most successful album, selling 45 million copies worldwide.