With only a few regrets, I voted in favor of the Massachusetts ballot initiative that decriminalized possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. That law went into effect yesterday.

I voted in favor of it for the standard reasons. And my reservations are also pretty much standard issue. But here’s my personal reservation.

It’s not because pot led to more serious drugs. I had friends for whom it was a gateway drug, although I’m not at all sure they wouldn’t have rushed through the gate, or hurdled it, or knocked it down, or routed around it, even if pot never existed. In any case, it didn’t lead to much else for me, beyond experimenting with the usual this and the scarier that.

No, my regret is that I wasted so much time. I smoked pot on a lot of my youth’s evenings because I was bored. But it’s not as if the world isn’t interesting enough. Being bored is your own fault.

For me, pot was artificial laziness. I regret the time I squandered.

Categories: Uncategorized dw