First Principles

Dear Punk Kid,

Yesterday I was in my yard when I noticed a half eaten green apple sitting in the middle of my back lawn.  As we haven’t bought a green apple in some time, there is only one conclusion as to its origin.  You threw it there, Punk.

Upon closer inspection, it became clear that the apple had cleverly drilled holes in it, along with burn marks that indicate it was used as a device to inhale or ingest marijuana.  Whether you half-ate the apple before or after the toking is unknown.  One thing is for certain – either way, it’s pretty gross.

As you know, my house is near a high school, and along the privacy fence ringing our back yard is a path that many students take to get to school.  So far, in all the time we’ve been here, not a single other one of your fellow students has gazed upon that fence and thought, “Gosh, but that would make a fine trash depository.”  Perhaps it’s because they respect their neighbors.  Or maybe it’s because their minds were less fuddled than yours, owing to your recent inhalation of the Noxious Weed.

Now, I personally am of a mixed mind on marijuana.  I’ve never partaken myself, but many close friends have, most of whom have never gone schitzo.  And if the individual is sovereign, then what the individual chooses to put in his body, provided it doesn’t harm another sovereign individual, seems to me to be none of the government’s business.

On the other hand, as you yourself has proven to me, people high on various substances seem disproportionately likely to trespass on the rights of others.  And unlike alcohol, which is arguably just as likely (if not more) than marijuana to induce someone to cause harm to another, there is not the millenia of cultural and social importance we associate with booze that justifies the same deference when it comes to Mary Jane.  And that’s why I am (tenuously) today still on the side of keeping pot illegal.

But I could be convinced, and I think a lot of other Americans could be as well.  But you’re not helping.

Something tells me that you sit around with your stoner buddies bemoaning the fact that “The Man” keeps marijuana illegal, just so they can KEEP you from OPENING YOUR MIND, man!  But it’s not “The Man.”  It’s your fellow man.  It’s your neighbors and fellow citizens who take one look at you and your actions and say, “Not in our state.”

So if you want to someday waste your life away in perfect freedom without worry that the cops will be busting down your door, you have a choice to make.  You can either keep being a dillhole and branding all pot users as mindless, rude, inconsiderate litterbugs, or you can take responsibility for rehabilitating your image and leave me and everyone else alone.