By Brad Senning
Arizona Daily Wildcat
December 4, 1997

Keep it 'dark-alley chic': Science proves pot is addictive

Arizona Daily Wildcat Brad Senning

The first time I got stoned was my freshman year in high school. A dealer drove up to my friend's driveway in a dark Camaro. Some exchange was made through a halfway parted window. We went with the good half of the exchange to the unlit side of my friend's house. He had a ceramic pipe. We got stoned.

An experienced toker can still be against legalization. Clinton admittedly smoked up, but he hired a General to fight the drug war. Then the whole "medical marijuana" issue came up. I can concede to prescribed marijuana. Restricting marijuana to a medical use means someone is controlling the use patterns, thereby preventing addiction.

But most of you aren't afflicted with glaucoma or cancer or AIDS, all of which are illnesses slated to be deserving of marijuana treatment. You smoke as recreation. It's one of those sociable drugs, like alcohol, which makes mundane activities fun.

Yet the pleasure of the high sugarcoats the drug's insidious effects.

We smoke cigarettes despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that nicotine causes addiction. So research indicating that THC - the active ingredient in marijuana - causes an addictive biochemical event in the brain much the same as heroin shouldn't phase us. It's one of those privileges of youth to scoff at talk of addiction and be confronted by it later.

But the research is there. Check out Science, June 27 of this year. 100,000 Americans seek treatment for marijuana dependence each year. Marijuana maintains a user's addiction with a system of rewards and punishments. The reward, though, is not simply the high. The brain reinforces behaviors that lead to biologically important rewards, such as eating and sex. Neurochemicals are released during such activities, thereby ensuring a desire for repetition. Marijuana manipulates the brain in the same way. The punishment for not repeating use is anxiety. Anxiety? We feel that every day. But the anxiety following a good high is more pronounced, and generally justifies getting high again.

Besides all the science, I don't want to see marijuana become like Green Day or Offspring. My friends, who appreciate underground music for the very sake that it's underground, stopped liking these bands as soon as they became popular. Half of marijuana's allure is in the very fact that it's an illegal vice. It's part of a certain dark-alley chic. You've got to blow the smoke out the dorm window through a cardboard tube stuffed with Bounty sheets. If it becomes legal, it will be just as mundane as alcohol when you're finally 21, or watching "Beavis & Butthead" sober, or Green Day's and Offspring's latest CDs. The mainstream, which is full of a bunch of sucks, doesn't deserve marijuana. Keep it illegal, and keep it righteous.

Brad Senning is a senior majoring in American literature and creative writing.