Some good comments in the Letters section in response to Salon's Reefer Madness story the other day.

I don't think people ought to smoke pot all the time - especially people who are in school, because it gets in the way of their learning, and young kids, because it impairs their already not-so-great judgement. That is common sense. But neither should people get drunk all the time, and that is legal, and in some countries (ahem, Scotland) kind of the norm.

But dude - pot does not make you crazy. It probably doesn't help, if you are already a little crazy, but then neither do a lot of things. Although, actually, I found in college than a little toke of a hash cigarette was a good way to stop panicking over body image issues, which were really a way of not panicking about exams and other things . . . I don't mean getting wacked-out stoned (and then eating seven peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) but just a little calmer. And it never made me more depressed the way drinking rum can.

Which is not to say all my cannabis experience has been terrific. When I have gotten too high it has been really scary and I didn't like it. But I also have never enjoyed the room-spinning nausea that comes from drinking too much. One learns one's limits, unless one has a substance abuse problem or other mental health problem that ought to be addressed.

I just don't get what this hysteria over marijuana is all about. Eric Schlosser talks about this in his book, "Reefer Madness". He says that it was tied up with racism and classism in the early part of the century, when it was associated with them dirty Mexicans and jazz musicians.

Such silliness. Let us all mock the Reefer Madness ads as comic heroes Harold and Kumar do.