If you took the Drug Czar's word for it, you'd think all marijuana users were helpless dope fiends who just need the cops to take their pot away and throw their sorry asses in rehab. But if you take the Drug Czar's word on this, or anything else for that matter, you'll be wrong. People smoke pot because they want to, and that's a scientific fact.

Via NORML, a new study helps clarify what we've all been struggling so hard to explain:

Understanding the Motivations for Recreational Marijuana Use Among Adult Canadians

Substance Use & Misuse, Vol. 43, Issue 3 & 4, February 2008: pages 539-572

The primary purpose of this study was to develop a better understanding of what motivates a selected group of adult[s] to use marijuana and to explore the social contexts in which it is used. …. Using interviews to gain insight into the subjective experiences of the participants, this research corroborated the results of previous studies that found that most adult marijuana users regulate use to their recreational time and do not use compulsively. Rather, their use is purposively intended to enhance their leisure activities and manage the challenges and demands of living in contemporary modern society. Generally, participants reported using marijuana because it enhanced relaxation and concentration, making a broad range of leisure activities more enjoyable and pleasurable.

It is so rare to hear the typical marijuana user described in this way (accurately) that I had to reread this just to be sure. The abstract is revealing as well:

They were predominantly middle class, employed in a wide range of occupations, and used marijuana recreationally to enhance relaxation and concentration while engaged in leisure activities.

Holy hookah, Batman! These hippies have jobs and happy lives!? Somebody better drug test them soon, otherwise they might make it their whole lives without anyone realizing what losers they are.

Seriously though, the idea that marijuana users are somehow mentally and physically handicapped is easily the most pernicious and inaccurate absurdity ever infused into the marijuana debate. It's just not true at all. Yet this mindless stereotype continues to be reinforced as the counterculture tends to embrace the drug openly, while more typical users remain stigmatized by the fear of arrest, drug testing, or being mistaken for a hippie.

The point here isn't just that marijuana use is seldom more than a harmless hobby, although that is true. Arguing that marijuana is harmless hasn't advanced our cause, so we must look beyond opportunities to simply make that argument on its own. The point here is that the typical marijuana user isn't someone who can benefit from criminal justice intervention. Just think about how damaging these punishments for marijuana can be and imagine what happens each time they are applied to someone whose life was previously going just fine:

Possible jail time
Substantial legal costs/fines
Loss of employment
Loss of drivers license
Loss of child custody
Loss of federal aid for education
Loss of federal aid for housing
Loss of federal aid for food

For many decades now, we've been ruining the lives of healthy, happy people for using marijuana. We're able to do this because we tell ourselves that they need us to help them. They are addicts. They are lazy. They are going to get cancer or depression. But wait, what if they're not? Oh my God, what have we done?