Smokin' and Tokin'

People smoke tobacco and marijuana for the same reasons. They burn some dried leaves and inhale the smoke to achieve some kind of "high", a euphoric feeling of some sort, or perhaps just for the satisfaction some tobacco people promise. Now they claim marijuana smoke eases pain, or something.

Just as smoking tobacco is being considered a dumb idea, the opposite is true of marijuana. Lawmakers and regulators seem bent on making it an okay thing to toke. Many citizens are lobbying for toking. If that bit of euphoria, or satisfaction, or pain relief is important enough to you, light up. But anyone with a brain must realize that purposely inhaling the smoke from burning leaves can't be good for the lungs.

Numerous studies assert that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer. Some very well done studies. What they actually prove is that the incidence of lung cancer is much higher among tobacco smokers. But there is always the guy who will tell you his grandfather started smoking tobacco when he was twelve and smoked every day of his life, until he died at age 90 when he stepped in front of a bus. Still, purposely inhaling smoke from dried leaves, up close and personal, cannot be good for lungs.

Tobacco companies' brands are enormously valuable. They have spent much treasure and at least one life promoting their brands. (The macho Marlboro Man died of lung cancer, widely attributed to his smoking habit.) They spend even more protecting the consistency of their brands. There was a time when tobacco companies distributed cartons of their best brands, free of charge, on college campuses. The idea being that if you smoked a carton of 200 of their cigs, you would be hooked on their brand.

You can buy a pack of Marlboros in Los Angeles, then buy a pack in Boston, and the taste and aroma would be the same. They carefully select their tobacco leaves. They carefully handle and process those leaves in a certain way. All to achieve that valued consistency. Not to protect you, to protect their brand!

Not true of marijuana. There is no brand name on a plastic sandwich bag of weed. No billboards or neon signs touting a name. Just a bag of weed. No one knows where it was grown. How it was handled. How many unwashed hands processed it. If there is a bit of pesticide or herbicide on the stuff. What kind of tropical mold spore or insect eggs may be included.

When I was in the Army in the Pacific, it was rumored that bootleggers were opening bottles of whiskey, somehow preserving the seal. They drew off 10% of the liquor, replaced it with water and re-closed the bottle. Do this ten times and you've added a free bottle of whiskey to your inventory. Maybe true, maybe not. But how much easier to "cut" that marijuana stash with a little jimson weed, or something, to increase your profit? If grown in South America, the pot has leaped many hurdles to reach Chicago streets. Why not, now, expand your inventory?

The idea being that when you set a bong of marijuana on fire and suck the smoke into your lungs, you must be performing the dumbest act of your lifetime.

You know what is said of restaurants: if you saw what goes on in the kitchen you would not eat the food. But again, the restaurant has a brand to protect.

If you knew what is in that bag of week, would you still toke?