11. Drug Use for Dummies: When Being Wrong Turns Out Right

Repurposed Coke cans and getting high behind the YMCA, Part II

Dear Readers,

Last time, I was describing the 1980s cultural scene and the irony that, in the era of “Just Say No,” my high-school friends and I were nonetheless convinced that marijuana was “harmless.” Adding to the irony, we were wrong, but being wrong in some ways turned out right, as I’ll explain today.

Why were we so certain that marijuana was innocuous? In part it surely had to do with people like Jack Herer and other cannabis advocates who, since the 1960s, had been suggesting as much. There certainly was a divide in my mind between the dummies who had been hoodwinked by Nancy Reagan, and wiser people like me and my friends. This led to still more irony—if the dummies thought marijuana was dangerous, then smoking marijuana signaled that you weren’t a dummy, though the number one stereotype about marijuana in the 1980s of course was that smoking it, well, made you a dummy (“Why do you think they call it dope?”).

That’s a silly way to put it, but it does speak to an important point …