This is the second in a series of blogs looking at the most recent “holiday” celebrated by many in the United States. I am talking about April 20th, or 4/20 as it is better known.
Across the country and now around the globe, marijuana enthusiasts use 4/20 as a call to gather and weed in public. As reported in www.usnews.com.
This year, Weed Day enthusiasts hoping to see the tide turn (both politically and socially) on the legalization of marijuana front have more to celebrate than usual.
Scary stat - A national survey by the Pew Research Center earlier this month found that, for the first time ever, a majority of Americans would now support regulating marijuana use the way most states and federal authorities regulate alcohol.
In fact, Pew found, the number of "Baby Boomers" who would support decriminalizing marijuana has gone up year after year during the 40 years it's been asking about the question – and is now more than double what it was in the early 1990s.
Gateway Drug?
Meanwhile, recent studies claim what social scientists have been saying for years, that the theory marijuana is a "gateway drug" leading to hard drug use is flat out wrong. Do you agree?
If anything, these new studies found other things like alcohol or cigarette use are better predictors than marijuana use of eventual prescription drug abuse or addiction to harder drugs like heroin and cocaine. How do you feel about that?
Time will tell if the liberalizing of marijuana policy on the state level increases or decreases marijuana use. I would assert that states start using a good portion of the tax money generated from marijuana sales for 12 hour drug classes and other forms of counseling and education for addiction.