Stoners coming out – beyond the marijuana monster myths | David Schmader | TEDxRainier

hi when I was invited here to give a talk on marijuana I wasn't sure exactly what that meant on the subject of or just on I hate to disappoint so I'm doing both my pleasure have you ever really looked at your hand I tell that joke because according to lore people high on marijuana are amazed by their limbs often Wells slow motion speed eating Doritos in their parents basement I hate this joke because it invokes a stereotype that is reductive at best and supports a system of diabolical lies at worst but I'm getting ahead of myself my name is David Schneider and I am a pothead by this I mean that when it comes time to enjoy an adult intoxicant I will forego beer wine and spirits in favor of marijuana which for me offers a world of nuanced delight and inspiration beyond the more crude effects of booze but I am NOT here to proselytize and for a long time I kept quiet about my own enjoyment of weed it was illegal for most of the time I was enjoying it and why make myself vulnerable as an out-and-proud law breaker if I didn't have to I also dreaded being saddled with the stoner stereotype of having my every move interpreted through the lens of pothead a label that calls up images of mr. Magoo levels of forgetfulness and passivity bordering on the comatose so what if I used weed not to escape but to engage with art and ideas and food and dogs and hilariously terrible movies I was but one man and I couldn't reconfigure society's image of the pothead all by myself I stayed in the closet and I'm familiar with the closet I grew up gay in the pre Elin bad old days when the only out gays were those who couldn't or didn't want to hide it drag queens and butch lesbians and gay bar raid victims whose faces wound up in newspapers and these Trailblazers might have been the whole of queer representation if Harvey Milk hadn't urged everyone to come out especially all the non remarkable queers who'd previously flown under the radar only then could an honest portrait of this subculture emerge it's the same with weed only instead of drag queens and Butch's weeds visibility parade is led by Cheech and Chong and Snoop Dogg and unlucky subjects of weed busts and I love drag queens and Snoop Dogg but leaving such exceptional outliers to do the heavy lifting of representation not only skews perception it allows damaging lies to flourish and the primary source of these lies is unfortunately the US government which has strenuously vilified weed and its users for over 80 years in 1930 the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics declared and I quote marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes and makes [ __ ] think they're as good as white men this type of slander presented as science was codified in 1970 when the Controlled Substances Act scheduled marijuana as a Schedule one narcotic a designation reserved for extremely dangerous drugs with no accepted medical use it is hard to overstate the pernicious effects of this weeds Schedule one classification for one thing by scheduling weed as a dangerous drug with no medical benefit the government makes it extremely difficult to conduct research that would prove that marijuana is a not very dangerous drug with a wealth of medical benefits for example to study allegedly less dangerous schedule to drugs scientists just the schedule to drugs like cocaine or crystal meth allegedly less dangerous schedule 2 to study these drugs scientists just whip up some crystal meth and study it but to study schedule 1 marijuana researchers must be pre-approved by the FDA apply for government grown marijuana from the National Institute of drug abuse and be temporarily deputized by the DEA as only federal agents are allowed to handle schedule 1 narcotics add to this the fact that most funding for drug research comes from the pharmaceutical industry which views weed is a threat and has a vested interest in keeping it labeled as a dangerous drug with no medical benefits but as patients in two dozen Medical Marijuana states can tell you weed has a ton of medical benefits from quashing nausea to minimizing arthritis pain to controlling seizure disorders and in the face of all this cognitive dissonance with the government's lies chafing against the actual experience of humans speaking honestly about my own we'd use seemed like the least I could do so I started doing it I'm a writer who often writes about myself and being honest about we'd was a lot like being honest about gayness both called for greater specificity instead of saying I was on a date say I was out with a guy when writing about celebrating with friends mention the ball when I started this coming out stoner campaign weed was still illegal where I lived but I worked in an alternative news weekly that encouraged radical honesty and where I'd gotten high with the editor and publisher still fixing myself with the stoner label was itchy and I offset dread of stereotyping by stepping up my professional courtesy game I was aggressively punctual ostentatiously well-organized and as reasonably well motivated as every other person on earth and the world turned now it's 2015 and within a five-mile radius of where you sit here in Seattle there are a half dozen stores where anyone over 21 can purchase marijuana for recreational use there are also a couple dozen dispensaries where authorized patients can buy marijuana for medicinal use meanwhile 300 miles east selling the small amount of marijuana for any reason can earn the seller a life sentence an insane state of affairs summed up well by CNN's Mike Riggs it should be cruel and unusual to mete out life without parole sentences for a drug that's so mainstream that Colorado is using state collected pot taxes to build new schools yeah and sorry about the notecards I'm really bad at memorizing so we need to strive for integrity in our nation's pot laws and a good first step is moving beyond the marijuana monster myths peddled by the feds one such myth marijuana is a gateway drug no it's not the gateway drug theory holds that people that smoke weed are more likely to try harder drugs but the main thing pushing weed smokers towards harder drugs our black-market weed dealers selling harder drugs the prohibition creates the connection another myth people just want medical marijuana to get high shut up the most exciting developments in medical marijuana involves strains that are incapable of making anyone high opening a world of treatment for people who want their medicine without a side of stoned like kids with seizure disorders also it is fascinating how this people just want X to get high argument is never applied to prescription painkillers which killed ten thousand people a year prescription painkillers killed 10,000 people a year while no one in the history of the world has ever died from marijuana another myth marijuana will make you stupid and maybe insane this one's harder to dismiss and not because it is true but because it can be true for weeds most vulnerable potential users which are kids for those whose brains and bodies are still developing marijuana can create a lifetime of problems from diminished learning capacities to an enhanced chance of mental illness and humans under 21 should not smoke or otherwise ingest marijuana and actually maybe even 21 is too young if I were in charge people wouldn't be able to start smoking weed until halfway through grad school speaking of white privilege earlier I mentioned Seattle's many weed stores all of them raking in huge legal profits on the same streets where earlier weed entrepreneurs earned prison sentences and if recreational marijuana is ever going to be a truly guilt free pleasure we need to rectify our nation's pot laws and do right by those whose lives were ruined by draconian war on drugs sentencing for now if you are someone who appreciates marijuana either as medicine or diversion or both come out you don't need to cast yourself as a marijuana spokesmodel but stop treating your weed based pleasures as a source of shame to be kept secret and the rest of you stop lazily accepting the old stoner lore I understand that we live in an age of fewer and fewer acceptable stereotypes and we want to cherish those few we have left but the stupid stoner one is just boring seriously if I could get every weed smoking surgeon and lawyer and new New York Times bestselling author I know here with me on stage and if we had spent the past couple weeks rehearsing the Thriller dance we could blow your faces off thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 2,492,628

Rating: 4.8758984 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Health, Activism, Disaster relief, Media, Philanthropy, Tragedy, Weather

Id: mfXGpVi-YRs

Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/oneir0naut0]

I didn't think I'd watch the whole thing, but I did. Very good summation of the idiocy of prohibition.

[u/[deleted]]

Great watch thanks

[u/Isolated_Moses]

This one made me cry

[u/NiceGreens]

this guy kills it, perfect presentation