Not Standing Up For a Passion

I'm going to preface this post with a little bit of my backstory: I have been enjoying marijuana for the past 5 months, ever since I started college. After the first time that I smoked marijuana, I immersed myself in the culture surrounding the plant. I did my research, watched every single documentary and even gave a speech on how it should be legalized. I always made sure that my interest in marijuana was a passion, and not a mental addiction - the only true way to do this was by knowing myself, my limits and to get the concrete reasons for why I indulge in marijuana down:

I am not stressed or depressed; I do not get chronic pain or am in need of medicine to deal with any part of my life, such as A.D.D or anything like that, and I am thankful for that. So then why do I indulge in marijuana? It is my wine with dinner, my occasional beer at a football game. I do not use marijuana because I want to escape life, but because I enjoy what it adds to my life.

I make sure to keep my grades up and to remain social. This is to disprove any stereotypes that people have towards stoners. As a result, I have a 3.7 GPA and more friends than I have ever had my entire life, and some of them don't even smoke marijuana. I even tutor other students in subjects such as Calculus.

So over this past winter break, I decided to try to share my passion with my parents. I knew that my parents grew up in the "hippie" era and almost definitely experimented with it before. When I first brought it up, they told me that they used to smoke hash and just to be careful about where I get it from, which I agreed with. Then I offered to possibly smoke with them, this is when things went downhill.

My mother told me to reassure her that I am not trying to make myself dumber by smoking marijuana by killing off my brain cells. I was tempted to tell her about the studies that prove that marijuana does not kill off anymore braincells than breathing regularly, but I did not want to anger her, because we do have a strong relationship that I did not want to damage. With that being said, I feel really bad for not standing up for a passion, and even worse for continuing to let misinformation about this plant be spread.

I do not know if I will get another opportunity to stand up for cannabis, and frankly I do not know if it will matter. It can often be fruitless to throw facts in someone's face, especially when they're you're parent.

So what's the point of this thread? This just happened a few hours ago, but I realized that the only way that change will ever happen is if we stop being afraid of being judged, and to stand up for our passion of cannabis. Unfortunately, I have failed on taking the first step, but maybe in time this will be remedied.

Peace