YOUTH OUTLOOK

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If Marijuana is Medicine, Rebels Will Look Elsewhere

By A. Clay Thompson

Date: 11-25-96

With pot inching its way towards mainstream acceptance, drug warriors are sounding the alarms that a generation of kids are on the path to potheadism. But in Amsterdam, where marijuana and hash are legally available, pot is strictly for straights. Youthful rebels and fringe dwellers are into conversation these days--much of it aimed at discouraging heroin use. A. Clay Thompson, a former roadie with a punk band, is a reporter for YO! (Youth Outlook), a publication by and about young people published by PNS.

The passage of California's Proposition 215 -- the "medical marijuana" initiative -- has generated dire warnings from anti-drug forces. Civilian and government drug warriors claim that sanctioning pot's medicinal qualities sends the wrong message to the public, especially young people. The state stamp of approval, they argue, will put a generation of kids on the path to potheadism -- a path that inevitably leads to harder drugs.

This argument misses a central aspect of marijuana's appeal to youth -- the fact that it is illegal. Smoking pot is a pleasureful snicker at authority, a quiet ritual of defiance. The plant's new status as an accepted medicinal agent isn't going to send young people scurrying towards the nearest dealer. If anything, it will have the opposite effect.

Marijuana has long served to split the hip from the square. So if marijuana becomes medicine, the hip may have to move on. I spent this summer working as a roadie for an American punk band in Amsterdam, where I caught a glimpse of one possible future. In Amsterdam, where marijuana and hash are legally available, pot is for straights. The German businessmen and American frat boys are the ones you'll find prowling the red light district, smoking in hash bars. While marijuana still circulates through the cultures of nonconformity, its accessibility and popularity throughout Dutch culture means that pot has lost its appeal among those disdainful of the mainstream.

So how do Amsterdam's anarchists distinguish themselves from the straights? They occupy abandoned buildings and hang banners out the window declaring their autonomy; throw rave parties in forgotten warehouses; broadcast incendiary messages from pirate radio stations. But they're not looking for new drugs. In the basement speakeasies I frequented, conversation is the point, pot is old news, and hard drugs are actively scorned. The same Dutch dissidents who throw eggs at politicians make posters discouraging heroin use.

One of the standard scare-stories about marijuana is that it is a "gateway" to other, more dangerous drugs. But here also, the anti's are missing the point. Pot has traditionally served as a "gateway" not to harder drugs but to harder questions about the legitimacy of adult authority. Once a young inhaler realizes that pot doesn't induce the "reefer madness" so fervently described by anti-drug missionaries, a host of other questions often follow. What other drugs fail to live up to their reputations as agents of evil? What about the plethora of perfectly legal life-destroying substances available at the corner store? What other carved-in-stone truths are actually a matter of perspective?

Ironically, the passage of Proposition 215 may serve anti-drug interests better than their own claims about the life-ruining qualities of all controlled substances. All illegal chemicals are not created equal, and a formal acknowledgment that smoking the occasional joint is not as risky as injecting heroin might foster some trust between those who make the rules and those who question them. The term for this is "honesty," and it's an undervalued commodity on the propaganda market.

With pot inching its way towards mainstream acceptance, we can expect fringe dwellers to start looking for something else to do. But if Amsterdam is any indication, dissidents looking for new highs won't be turning to hard drugs. Marijuana use is a shared ritual of cultural defiance--not a self-destructive cry for help. And the movement towards decriminalization won't be a gateway for innocents into a drug underworld, but a step away from a rabid paternalism that throws well-adjusted people into prison "for their own good."