Sanjay Gupta can smoke my cock

So CNN’s Sanjay Gupta is gonna be our new surgeon general, eh? Color me unimpressed. (A tannish/beigeish shade, sort of a cross between dry sand and sand that was wet like half an hour ago but is pretty much dry now. So, basically sand-colored, I guess.)

The Gupe (as I'll be calling him)? Not a big pot fan. And his reasoning is even weaker than your mom's. Quoth the Gupe:

"[M]arijuana isn't really very good for you."

[Insert blindingly obvious well-neither-are-alcohol-or-cigarettes-or-a-thousand-other-things-and-they're-not-illegal spiel.]

He then begins quite an impressive list of reasons why, in fact, marijuana is good for people:

"True, there are health benefits for some patients. Several recent studies, including a new one from the Scripps Research Institute, show that THC, the chemical in marijuana responsible for the high, can help slow the progress of Alzheimer's disease. (In fact, it seems to block the formation of disease-causing plaques better than several mainstream drugs.) Other studies have shown THC to be a very effective antinausea treatment for people--cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, for example--for whom conventional medications aren't working. And medical cannabis has shown promise relieving pain in patients with multiple sclerosis and reducing intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients."

That's a fairly convincing series of arguments for legalizing pot, at the very least for medical purposes, right? Right? No?

"But I suspect that most of the people eager to vote yes on the new ballot measures aren't suffering from glaucoma, Alzheimer's or chemo-induced nausea. Many of them just want to get stoned legally."

:-( 

That's right, fuck all those goddamn sick people. We can't be turnin' all of society into hippies and wastoids, now can we.

"Why do I care? As Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, puts it, 'Numerous deleterious health consequences are associated with [marijuana's] short- and long-term use, including the possibility of becoming addicted.'"

Nora Volkow is this luscious beauty, for the record:

KILL IT WITH FIRE!

So yeah, take what "she" says with a grain of salt.

"What are other health consequences? Frequent marijuana use can seriously affect your short-term memory. It can impair your cognitive ability (why do you think people call it dope? [Ed. note: Duh, because it’s doooooooooope!]) and lead to long-lasting depression or anxiety."

Or it could, you know, not. It could just feel awesome while I watch my new Pineapple Express DVD sitting on my couch not side-swiping children as I rush back home from happy hour. Maybe the consequence is that it enhances my creativity, so I sit down and write out 5,000-word blog posts on why tigers are way bad-asser than lions, but a liger is like the One Ring in Lord of the Rings – it rules them all. Number four on my Sweetest Big Cats list would have to be the black panther. ‘Cause, man, you can’t like see it when it’s dark.