Hi, my name is Shayla Myers and I’m from Dallas TX! I have two older brothers, one who came to UT himself, and another who I’ll talk to about later. So to be quite frank with you I have personally smoked marijuana. Young, and naïve, I fell under the influence of my surrounding peers, only to get up and regret it till this day. However, unlike me, most are still suppressed by this green, emotionless foliage.
What is it about marijuana that people feel the need to claim over? Is it the so called high? Is it the feeling of being cool? Well any one of them can tell you their own reasoning, but can anyone explain the truth?
As humans, we tend to take advantage of what’s handed to us. Ever heard the phrase “…All good things must come to an end”, a classic idiom from American idioms? Well, that’s an example of this circumstance. What was meant to heal and cease pain, has now been downed upon because of humanity’s own demand for personal gain.
In this hyperlink, you can see some quite interesting facts of the history of marijuana. http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000026#2900-bc-1599-ad
So, as biased as I may seem, I still have mixed feelings towards the use of marijuana. While I believe its usage can be taken advantage of, I still don’t want it to be illegal. You can’t just make someone not do something. It’s like telling a child they can’t have candy. All their going to do is want it more. Well, at least I know I would…
When It comes to putting things into our body, shouldnt it just be us, the people, who decides what goes into it? Yeah, yeah, maybe the government is trying to protect our health, but if they were really trying, they would have shut down half of these fast food restaurants. So maybe it’s just to protect America’s reputation. We are pretty much a disliked country to many, and legalizing marijuana would just add to the “Why We Despise America” list, and we don’t want that.
I suppose now would be a good time to bring up my other brother. He is a 34 year old man who sadly has cancer and has struggled with it for many years now. He has been on his death bed twice and through those times I thought I was going to lose him… However, today he is doing rather fine, and when he’s not, he can get medical marijuana prescribed to him.
Now to all of you who are feeling bad for my brother or just glad he gets to use medical marijuana, I’m going to stop you there. This is where I go back to my other conflicting point of view. My brother is an example of how people take advantage of a health supplement. He plays his cancer card and gets to smoke it whenever he feels the need.
If I’m being totally honest, I believe it wasn’t the cancer that changed his life for worse, but instead the marijuana. If I could take it away from him, I would. However, like I said earlier, you can’t just tell someone they can’t do something. All they are going to do is want it more…
I really enjoyed the honesty in your blog. It was personal and explained why you had the viewpoints you had. I’ve tried marijuana as young and naïve adolescent as well and it was nice to know I wasn’t alone. I also agree with the fact that you can’t tell someone what they can and cannot do. It’s like trying to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. (Great Kanye pic, by the way!)
I did like your blog post, as well. Your title matched the overall blog post, which I liked as well. I feel that if marijuana was legalized just because people are gonna do it anyways, it’s like enabling them to do something that you know is not right. For example, some parents in America enable their children by giving them whatever they want, just because they whine enough, and their child ends up getting into a ton of trouble. Those parents ask why things ended badly for their children… This is why America enforces a strict set of laws regarding marijuana. This ties into the controversy of freedom in America. How “free” is our country, really? If you really look at our government, we can’t just do whatever we want. When have to abide by certain rules and what our Constitution states to “govern” ourselves. Just a thought.(:
Nice to know that your brother is doing fine. I agree that people do take advantage of the resources we have. I don’t think you should use marijuana if you don’t need it. But as humans we tend to be very selfish and greedy. Legalizing marijuana is a great way to help those who truly need it. I’m also not naive and like you said there are people who take advantage of the fact that they can use marijuana for medical purposes.