No pot sale here

So I’ve never smoked a cigarette. I’ve never taken a drug. I’ve never awakened with a hangover.

Sometime in 1980, I was invited to participate in student congress at Bronx High School of Science as a member of my speech team.

Student “legislators” got to draft their own bills, so the inevitable joint pitch was made: “The Legalization of Marijuana.”

I was new to the format, so I kept quiet until a friend from another school encouraged me to choose a side and request permission to speak.

The soul of my “no” floor exercise was essentially that while I respected the rights of the individual, my own would be violated by secondhand smoke.

I’m sensitive to smoke. Throughout childhood, my eyelids were crimson orbs. That changed in my late 20s, around the time people finally started to question the hazy benefits pitched in those vintage ads (“More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette!”). Colleagues could no longer smoke in the newsroom and visiting UST execs stopped transforming the Greenwich Time conference room into an ashtray.

Even as a teenager, I couldn’t help but mentally document the grave irony of classmates puffing away in the school driveway, while hearses pulled out of the funeral home next door.

So I’ve never smoked a cigarette. I’ve never taken a drug. I’ve never awakened with a hangover.

But my red eyes always convinced people otherwise. My high school dean asked the blunt question. Dealers approached me on my walk to school. A college peer asked if I had any papers. Since I was the editor at the time, I handed him the latest issue.

Naturally, my first investigative series as a journalist was to uncover high school drug use. I learned a lot by interviewing an admitted user separate from his parents (they were aghast to discover what he had been putting in his morning orange juice).

I avoided judging others, but resented it when a more seasoned colleague at The Stamford Advocate observed “I don’t trust anyone who has never taken drugs.”

Those high school speech-writing skills remain useful, as I strive to approach editorial stances dispassionately. Our editorial board is still shaping a formal position regarding legalization of marijuana.

I’ve taken informal polls as I’ve addressed community groups over the years. I was speaking to high school newspaper editors from throughout Fairfield County about the need to consider all sides of any issue. I challenged them to list reasons for and against the legalization of pot in Connecticut.

I was stunned that they opposed legalization, mostly leaning on their belief that it is a gateway drug.

This put me in the position of challenging their conclusions. They fired back personal examples.

Finally, one student said in a resigned tone, “I guess we could legalize it since Connecticut needs the money.”

I tried this again with about 20 parents recently. Most would not hesitate to legalize it.

I have skin in the game. On this Mother’s Day, I flash back to when we adopted our son in 2011. I spent weeks in a Texas NICU with him as he shivered through withdrawal from the drugs in his system. Yes, I’ve never taken a drug and he was born with them in his veins. I pray he’ll have the willpower to make the right choices when those times come. But that will be his story to tell.

On this Mother’s Day, I think about my wife surviving a childhood in the 1970s with hippie parents who filled their home with friendly, and low level malevolent, dealers and secondhand pot smoke while she tried to block it out and do homework. It’s the brand of resolve our son will need to combat impulses compromised by his time in the womb. But that’s her story to tell.

On this Mother’s Day, thoughts stray to our son’s birth mother. She was in her 20s when we met, and deeply under the influence. A social worker warned me she probably wouldn’t live long. She had a story to tell as well. But hers ended at 30.

I appreciate the benefits of medical marijuana. I hope lawmakers recognize the wisdom in expanding its use to treat more maladies.

I also support an overhaul in a justice system that exposes itself as racist and elitist regarding sentences for possession.

But I think of friends who died too young from tobacco use. I think of the vaping epidemic confounding parents and educators, and the opioid crisis that’s filling graveyards. I think of my son, his mom, and his birth mother.

Stop telling me we should legalize marijuana because it’s better than other things that are bad for us. Or because everyone else is doing it. Or because we need the cash.

You’re just blowing smoke in my face.