Anti-Marijuana Spiel
Written October 12, 2003

Throughout the fair city of Waterloo, an age old menace prowls the streets. Unseen by many, a monster spawned by our unwitting hippy parents in the 60’s reaches out its green tendrils and grasps the lungs of students everywhere, subverting them with clouds of acrid, choking smog. This leafy fiend can strike anywhere: a porch gathering, frolicking youths in the park or innocents standing in the bus stop just off-campus. Sadly, our worst fears have come true as it becomes apparent that many university students are habitually smoking marijuana cigarettes – reefers.

Why so many individuals have succumbed to this guilty pleasure is a mystery to many of my weedologist colleagues, as marijuana use has definitively been linked with immense stupidity. Often manifested in the form of confused indecision when faced with the need to select a donut at Tim Horton’s or the complete inability to form a coherent sentence, this voluntary mental handicapping is baffling. Why would fine, upstanding WLU academics pay money to reduce their intelligence to that of a common Western student?

Another crippling side effect of smoking the pot is known as “the munchies” which is a strong desire to eat as much (junk) food as possible, exceeding normal human capacities for consumption. You can often see groups of people afflicted with the munchies descending upon food vendors with the enthusiasm and voracity of a pack of rabid hyenas, eager to stuff their fat stoner faces. Obviously this repulsive activity results in a high level of obesity and you can frequently see groups of regular marijuana users rolling around inside used truck tires, too bloated to simply walk to their next dining destination.

In addition to making tokers fat and mentally incapacitated, weed often inflicts negative personality traits on those unfortunate enough to be peer pressured into taking a hit. Some pothead stoner burnout druggies lose all social finesse and tact, condemning them to a life of incidental abstinence. Others become temporarily insane, rambling about how hot dog relish is the twenty-seventh coming of Christ. Still others fancy themselves learned philosophers when high, droning on about how the leaves of an imaginary tree represent an idealistic Communist society. Yeah that’s right – pot smokers are weird motherfuckers. Real philosophers smoke opium.

Short term memory loss is a very real danger to the habitual marijuana abuser. They lose the ability to remember details when under the influence of the drug, walking around in a permanent haze of overlapping events and generalized experience: “D’you remember that one time when we got stoned and played video games?” Sorry Junior, but that was EVERY night for the last three weeks and they’re all blending into one experience in your drug-addled mind. Marijuana essentially steals memories, blends them up into a delicious fruit daiquiri and pours the resulting uniform sludge back into users’ brains – a tasty treat that’s entirely useless for all practical purposes.

Oh no, what the hell am I typing? See, I smoked the drugs once back at a high school bush party and now I’m cursed, unable to explain myself except with inane and ridiculous metaphors. For the love of God, learn from my personal shame and obey the law, my children. Avoid the evil socialist clutches of marijuana, or pay the frightening and possibly sexy consequences.

I ended up having a lot of fun with this article. It was originally supposed to be part of a point-counterpoint dealie for the Student Life section of the Cord, where I was, ironically enough, taking the position that marijuana is harmful and bad and evil and devastating to the childrenfolk. I obviously didn't take my role very seriously and ended up with a ridiculous mishmash of popular misconceptions and stereotypes. However, my sarcasm evidently hit home with some people. In the weeks following the publishing of this article, we got a whole bunch of letters from pothead students denouncing my ignorance and indignantly claiming that smoking didn't do them any harm. One dumbass business student even wrote a 800 word diatribe about how he gets high before exams and still gets "good marks." it was ridiculous, and by the end of the series of letters, I was almost sorry that I had even tried to joke about something as sacred as MARIJUANA. Apparently it's a hot topic.