Let's Spark Up a Fatty and Discuss the Early Results of Marijuana Legalization

Remember to stay hydrated!

Our national dialogue about marijuana has not been very dank. For years, the focus was on the obvious proxy issue of medical marijuana. When Last Week Tonight did a story on marijuana in 2017, we included a gut-wrenching clip of a Vietnam veteran arguing that marijuana helped him overcome his nightmares about the war. The other primary writer on the piece and I argued that: 1) Anecdotal evidence isn’t how you establish the efficacy of a medicine, and 2) Grisly war flashbacks, in which the soldier tearfully lists the names of his fallen comrades, might be a tad heavy for a comedy piece about reefer. In the end, we couldn’t get the clip removed, but we managed to get the list of fallen soldiers edited down, and we also removed the guy’s grisly description of a dead VC soldier. Because, again, this was supposed to be a comedy show.

I think I can safely say this now: One of the main arguments for legalizing weed is that weed can be fun. It makes bad movies good, makes good music great, and -- pro tip -- makes Mario Kart absolutely fucking hilarious. In a perfect world, a responsible adult would be free to relax with a joint at the end of a long week the same way my Dad used to relax with a few cans of Natural Light (no, Dad wasn’t a college student -- he just had the beer-buying habits of one).