MARIJUANA

I planted seeds in pot full of store-bought earth, put the pot on the window sill that got the most sunshine. I watered it and waited. I have a green thumb. My potato plants always grow strong, long vines, but the pot seeds in the pot did nothing for a long time.

Suddenly, a quarter-inch high, teeny shoot appeared. It grew very slowly. I bought soil nutrients. I installed a lavender light on the window sill, and turned it on every night.

All my friends said Mary Jane/Pot/Weed was great. Pot-smoking was IN. Expensive -- my seeds came from the packet my agent gave me at his Christmas party, where I tried his marijuana fudge and loved it.

Some of my arty friends who loved weed, recommended the serious stuff -- hash, heroin, cocaine -- they said "Coke highs are beautiful!" "You lose your inhibitions!" "It's a profoundly exciting, artistic experience!" But I was just starting out as a dancer. I wasn't taking chances on anything that I might get hooked on.

The pictures in my "How to Grow Plants" book showed a bountifully lush plant. When my plant was a scrawny twenty-inches tall, with about twenty leaves, I tried a pinch in a glass pipe I bought at a Head Shop.

The odor of marijuana was there. As for the high ... well, I wasn't a smoker. Inhaling made me cough. And swallowing what I inhaled with a sip of wine didn't work -- it just made me hungry (and dancers do not want to gain weight). But I wanted to learn how to smoke pot because ... because it was fun, it was IN and sort of wicked.

That's what worries me about Medical Marijuana. It's good news for people who need it for chronic pain, and various incurable diseases. It's good for the fourteen states that allow it to be purchased with a prescription at pharmacies.

It's good for unemployed auto industry workers in Michigan. A young man, formerly a car detailer, opened the "Med Grown Cannabis College" on the outskirts of Detroit. In a six-week course, a person can get the skills they need to cultivate marijuana, package it, and talk knowledgeably, as they fill prescriptions in the new dispensaries that are opening up all over the state.

I can't help wondering what would have happened if cocaine hadn't been an illegal drug. Would we have crack, meth addicts, pills, and all the other illegal substances?

I'm very glad more people can get cannabis with a prescription. But I think it will create more users -- more kids will go after it. It's sexy, wicked, challenging, and hey -- it's potentially dangerous -- that's fun with a capitol F.