5 Feet of Fury

Legalize laziness: My NEW Taki’s column

I can’t imagine the comments will be too “JOOOOO!!!”-y this week…

Weed makes people lazy. You’ll notice I didn’t say “stupid,” although no one can convince me that toking it adds brain cells or IQ points, either.

Many of the dedicated potheads I’ve known have been of average—even above average—intelligence. And they were failures. Or, at the very least (“most”?), mediocrities. They worked just hard enough to get by, and even achieved a degree of success in a constricted sphere of endeavor: hosting a long-running novelty radio show; writing a few books and teaching (part-time) at the same college forever; assistant-managing a small indie record or video store, or maybe a bike shop.

And there are fewer such “jobs” to go around all the time. Fewer still, I imagine, if America reacts to Canada’s legalization spree by slowing border crossing to a crippled crawl, free-trade agreements be damned.