Daniel Denvir is a Pot Smoker

By PW Staff
Add Comment Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted May. 20, 2009

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PW contributor -- and all-around prolific writer -- Daniel Denvir is on Huffington Post today, "confessing" to his pot-smoking ways. But don't worry, kids, he's playing it cool. An excerpt:

A big problem with drug legalization politics is that to speak or act in favor of pot legalization tends to identify one as a stoner, a patchouli-soaked hippy associated with the most pathetically single-issue of politics. I know lots of intelligent folks, from professors and lawyers to carpenters, teachers and union organizers that smoke -- but none of them wants their personality or politics to be defined by smoking pot. It's as if there's absolutely no line between discreet social smoking and donning a shirt reading "Hemp Wanted" (full disclosure: my 15-year old self owned such a shirt, and a High Times subscription to boot). One can't write or agitate around drugs -- or, for that matter, sex -- without exposing oneself to a ridiculous set of caricatures.

I don't know anyone my age who thinks it's cool to loudly associate yourself with drug use -- a predilection I tend (aside from this post) to share. Even on the left, the bacchanalian, yippie, gonzo journalism engaging musings on sex and drugs at times seem to confront a renewed Puritanism -- biographically, my writing on the subjects is mostly limited to blogs. In my social circle, such a loud embrace puts one somewhere slightly below Trekkie on the cool-o-meter. (Okay, yes, the new movie is great).

I haven't been involved in drug-related activism since I was in high school, but pot and drug decriminalization are still important, for reasons -- like the mass incarceration of people of color and the mindless, blood-soaked, hypocritical war on Latin America -- that go far beyond my personal and epicurean drive to, on occasion, get high and have a good time.

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