So I was calmly surfing the internet this afternoon, on a site I frequent from time to time, when I was hit with an ad on the side of the page that simply had a picture of a joint, and the words “Yes” and “No” written next to it. In fear of being called a square by the internets, I succumbed to online peer pressure and clicked yes. It then brought me to this website. Now I’m no scientomologist (although I play one on the internet), but some of these “facts” seem a little questionable to me. This is, after all, Brooklyn Skeptic. Reader, I am skeptical.
For example, fact #3 claims that marijuana smokers are four times more likely to get D’s in class. Really? Four times more likely to get D’s? Not five times more likely to get F’s? I don’t think anyone is arguing that smoking weed is going to make you a genius (except maybe Willy Nelson). However I feel that if you were assigned a paper on marijuana for a science class, and used said piece of data, your teacher would most likely give you a D. And you’d deserve it, you fucking pothead.
Anti-marijuana advertising has always been pretty piss-poor, from movies like Reefer Madness to Rachel Leigh Cook going schizo on an egg. My personal favorite was the one where a kid forgets his grandmother’s birthday “because he was stoned.” There are also those that show kids getting into car accidents because they’re stoned, which would be a lot easier to support if they weren’t shown back to back with Busweiser commercials where a bunch of dudes are drinking shitloads of beer, most likely at sporting events far from any form of public transportation.
These ads, to their credit, are not giving anyone any false information. I’m sure that a kid has missed his or her grandma’s birthday because he or she was stoned. I’m sure that people under the influence of marijuana have gotten in car accidents. And I’m sure that Rachel Leigh Cook has destroyed many, many eggs. But to pull false facts out of your ass just to scare people into not doing a drug? That, my friends, is propaganda.
Thank god sniffing glue is still good for me.
http://www.norml.org.nz/Marijuana/Driving.htm
“The largest study ever done linking road accidents with drugs and alcohol has found drivers with cannabis in their blood were no more at risk than those who were drug-free. In fact, the findings by a pharmacology team from the University of Adelaide and Transport SA showed drivers who had smoked marijuana were marginally less likely to have an accident than those who were drug-free.”
“…could be explained by anecdotal evidence that marijuana smokers were more cautious and drove more slowly because of altered time perception.”
most of those ads you see linking marijuana to car accidents don’t mention that those statistics are taken from incidents where the driver had marijuana AND alcohol in their system.
I forget best friend’s birthdays stone sober.
And the hate I have for eggs has the passion of a thousand suns…all of the time.
I suppose that makes sense, although I don’t think I’d trust myself to drive under the influence of much of anything. Then again, I don’t have a license, and have only driven twice, never exceeding fifteen miles per hour. I’ve met a huge faction of people that claim that they drive better stoned, and often they say that it’s because they learned to drive while stoned.
Daveed, today’s my birthday. Thanks for remembering, dick.
they only wanna do you dir. Liana Merete.