In case you just gnawed your way out of the shackles keeping you confined to your grandparents’ storm cellar, marijuana legalization has started to gain a lot of momentum recently. With pot decriminalization bills coming up for vote in Oregon, Washington and Colorado (not to mention seven other state initiatives for medical marijuana), you no longer have to meander through the quad on a college campus to hear the debate on whether we should free the weed or not. No longer is legalizing pot the bailiwick of the White Rastafarian who reeks of patchouli and the pall of several years’ worth of Rainbow Gatherings. Now upright citizens are freely talking about whether legal weed is worth having traffic jams that center around Taco Bells.

As with all things, there is a bad side to pot. And quite frankly if weed legalization wants to gain further traction, the following people need to shut up and go back to watching Robot Chicken…

4. “Why can’t we all just get a bong?”

Among pot smokers, I’ve noticed that this is often just a phase for some of them. After their first puff of weed, suddenly those Che Guevara t-shirts start speaking to them and everything around them is just another way The Man has kept them disenfranchised. The dreamy haze of marijuana has given them an overall sense of peace and ease that it must be shared with everyone! All must know of the Zen-like state of being that comes with having bloodshot eyes and Cheeto-stained fingers. Why if the leaders of the world would just gather at the UN and smoke a huge hookah in the General Assembly, there would be no wars! Things like the Mid-East crisis would be a thing of the past if a blunt was shared amongst the people. Then we could move onto better things, like a couch that cleans itself when you spill nachos on it.

The problem with these folks is that they forget (or haven’t learned) that not everyone turns into a Sid & Marty Krofft character when they’re high on weed. As with all states of being, you can’t just lump someone into the “trustworthy” category just because they’re a Head (ask your folks what that means, kids.) I knew a guy who would spin a new theory on the JFK assassination every time he smoked a bowl,  and another guy literally turned into a cross between the twitchy guy from “Reefer Madness” and Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker. Hang around enough pot smokers and you find that there is a group of which you feel tempted to blatter about the noggin with a frying pan – and those who you should hide the knives from.

3. “Pot is a Universal Medicine.”

Now, I’m not going to toss my hat into the huge debate on whether medical marijuana is a legitimate means of managing pain or helpful with abating any of the other myriad symptoms of chronic illness. I’m going to leave that to other people. I do not doubt the possible efficacy in using pot to subside some of the nastier discomforts of things like cancer and MS. Having said that, there do seem to be a whole bunch of people with their “Green Card” in Oregon that have chronic back and neck pain.

When I was in college one of my classmates was a staunch medical cannabis advocate (and coincidentally had difficulty turning in her work.) While waiting for class to start, she suddenly broke into a furious coughing fit. I asked her what was going on and she said, “It’s probably just bronchitis again. I’ll smoke a bowl when I get home and I’ll be right as rain.” I tried pointing out to her that if she has a bronchial infection, the last thing her poor, inflamed lung passages need is to be bombarded with a substance that would irritate them further, but she said something vague about the THC being a relaxant and dismissed the idea outright.

It’s one thing to use pot to medicate a specific condition (no matter how vague), but getting stoned to treat all maladies that befall you makes about as much sense as praying the gay away. It’s a bit akin to using a Vicodin prescription for a head cold.

2. “Everything’s better on weed.”

As someone who has partaken of weed, I can say that there are more than a few activities that suddenly become mind-blowing when you’re stoned. Not in the inhibition-lowering, “I’ve drunken myself invincible” false sense of self-confidence alcohol provides either. It’s more sensual: curry is like an Alex Grey painting in your mouth; sex is exciting as you thought it would be when you were a teenager; Spongebob Squarepants has a hidden depth to it that you never before realized; and everything becomes inappropriately funny. (A friend of mine said many people turn to pot because they don’t laugh enough in their daily lives.) It’s not that things really get qualitatively better, it’s just that being stoned skews your senses a bit. Much like alcohol’s “beer goggles”, pot puts it’s own “weedy haze” over everything – and the next thing you know, you’re syncing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon to The Wizard of Oz.

But there are so many people who have to be stoned in order to derive pleasure from any kind of activity in their lives. Here’s a pro-tip, if you revisit something that you’ve done when high and find it’s not fun any more: IT WASN’T FUN TO BEGIN WITH. Movies that are only funny when high, aren’t really funny (the same with certain comedians.) And if you have to be stoned in order to enjoy sex – either seek therapy or take up knitting instead. Guess what? When you’re high, everything suddenly becomes the best thing you’ve ever consumed, witnessed, or jerked off into. Being stoned in order to enjoy something is like being drunk to get through the day – if your life is really that dismal, get professional help.

Or, as Moliere put it in High Times:

Il faut vivre pour fumer pas fumer pour vivre

One should live to toke not toke to live.

1. “It’s been almost an hour since I smoked, dammit.”

I used to live with a woman whose boyfriend was almost obsessive-compulsive about his pot use. He would sit at the computer, bong at the ready, and hit it every 15 minutes. It was like being in a house with a broken, old-school radiator – if you forgot you hid a stash in it during the summer. He also wasn’t the most reliable person in the world – nothing malicious, but he was about as motivated to take the garbage out as most teenagers (and he was in his 30s). He was a college student too, so immediately after returning home from class, he would hit the pipe as if to make up for lost time. While I got along with the lad for the most part, every time I talked with him I could see him internally counting the seconds until his next bong hit. And if his girlfriend’s stash ever ran low, his tone turned into a high-pitched nasal whine that made fingernails on a chalkboard seem like an aria. Needless to say, after his significant other threw him out of the house, suddenly the place got a lot cleaner – and the bong water was changed more regularly.

Now, I’ve had the occasional weekend that resembled the movie Friday – if it starred a geek in his mid-thirties who watches more Doctor Who than is healthy. But in every smoker’s circle, there is that one guy who not only insists on being stoned 24/7, but starts whining when they’re not. I know pot smokers who practically have NASCAR-like endorsements from Zig-Zag and Visine – but the majority of them realize that sobriety is one of life’s little annoyances to deal with when they’re at the grocery store. Point is: most stoners I know don’t whine about the occasions where they are inexplicably sober, they merely shrug and wait until they’re back home from visiting their in-laws. If you find yourself willing to crawl naked across an acre of carpet tacks and cat shit to get a resin hit off an old Coke-can pipe you forgot about under your bed, it’s time for some self-assessment. Most people who have smoked pot are perfectly fine with being sober – but if pot is what makes life bearable, it’s only a matter of time until you find yourself thinking “So, I wonder what’s the deal with this meth thing I’ve been hearing so much about?”