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Mellow attitude toward pot use lingers locally
By Sheela Raman, Globe Correspondent | July 18, 2005
Wendy Campbell smokes marijuana almost every day and says it should be legal to do so.
The 23-year-old Millis resident is neither the stereotypical stoner nor a patient suffering from a painful illness. She works 70 hours a week, holding down a data-entry job and a waitressing job in New Bedford. She is an ambitious college graduate who plans on having a successful career and a family.
''When I smoke pot I'm a lot less stressed," she says. ''It's a bad habit for some people because they don't know when to stop. I really only smoke a bowl a day." She says she will stop smoking marijuana when she has children and a more stable life.
Such a relaxed attitude toward the drug is not surprising, given the recent findings by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that people who live in the Boston area have the country's highest rate of marijuana use -- more than 12 percent of youths and adults here reported smoking it in the previous 30 days. We already knew that Massachusetts was the most liberal state in the nation. Now we learn that it's also the pothead capital of the United States.
The Globe spent the past few weeks interviewing local adults and found all sorts of circumstances under which they are smoking pot. Twentysomethings are smoking after work and on the weekends, at concerts and in their apartments. Parents are smoking after their kids go to bed. Baby boomers are smoking with their adult children. Some say they smoke pot every night after work instead of having a glass of wine. (Many of those interviewed were, for obvious reasons, uncomfortable with having their names published in the newspaper.)
Several share Campbell's post-college attitude toward marijuana. They may not fit the image of the scruffy, tie-dye-wearing, jam-band-loving college pot smoker, but they say they smoke it almost every day -- or at least know other professionals who do the same. They lead busy, often stressful lives, and they have laid-back attitudes about the risks of using the drug.
Josh Evans, who graduated from Harvard University last year and now lives with his parents in Brookline, says he knows more people who smoke marijuana now that he's finished college. ''You'd think that it was mostly the college crowd," he says. But at Harvard, few people he knew smoked marijuana regularly. ''Harvard kids are a little too uptight, too focused."
Evans, who says he does not smoke marijuana, now plays in a band, and he says his bandmates use the drug almost every day, as do their friends. ''It's a bunch of people who maybe didn't go to college and are working long hours, or who went to school and are trying to make an artistic career."
A 22-year-old New Bedford man named Andrew says that when he would come home from school as a child, his house would stink of marijuana because his parents lit up regularly. ''They would just be hanging out, watching a movie they rented in the living room," he says. ''They weren't like, 'Hey kids, let's pass the joint around the Thanksgiving dinner table.' " But he says the first joint he tried came from his parents' closet.
Andrew's father is a business executive, and his mother is a stay-at-home mom who did, Andrew says, an excellent job raising the family. ''They're your everyday, normal parents in their 50s," he says. ''They just do it to unwind, instead of having a drink." Andrew says he doesn't smoke marijuana because it makes his heart beat too fast.
Opinions about whether marijuana is harmful differ depending on which experts you talk to.
Dr. Harrison Pope, director of the biological psychiatry laboratory at McLean Hospital in Belmont, has conducted more than 20 studies on marijuana use. He says research has proved that both alcohol and marijuana impair motor skills, and there has been no conclusive evidence showing that one substance is safer than the other. But he says that, according to his research, marijuana causes less permanent damage to the long-term memory of heavy users who have quit than alcohol does.
Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a Harvard Medical School associate professor emeritus of psychiatry and a marijuana smoker since 1973, says alcohol is far more dangerous than marijuana. ''There have been practically no cases of death due to marijuana, compared to alcohol and cigarettes," he says. ''To overdose on marijuana you'd probably have to smoke a trailer truck's worth."
Grinspoon says he smokes marijuana in the same way Andrew's parents do -- in place of a glass of Scotch as an evening relaxant. ''I couldn't do anything after a glass of Scotch, but after one-third of a joint I'm still useful to do some thinking and come up with ideas," Grinspoon says. ''I can even sit down to write."
Grinspoon, 77, who has written two books on the beneficial aspects of smoking pot, says he does not find it disturbing that the study ranked the Boston area number one in marijuana use. He says he knows many people on the Harvard faculty who use marijuana to relax and that they have told him the drug works better to lift their spirits than antidepressants.
Ray DeSimone, 50, a refrigeration mechanic from Johnston, R.I., says he has been smoking marijuana all of his adult life and smokes regularly with his three children, who are in their early 20s. All are in college or have graduated from college.
''I would way rather see my kids smoke a joint than go to the bar and have seven drinks," he says. ''After seven drinks you could go out on the road and kill somebody. But with pot I'm not worried."
Such a low perception of risk among marijuana users is dangerous, says Dr. John R. Knight, director of the Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research at Boston's Children's Hospital. Marijuana is as addictive as alcohol, he says, but people do not see this because it causes fewer physical symptoms. Knight says marijuana addiction is challenging to treat because patients generally show a greater degree of denial than other types of drug addicts.
''It's now considered to be normal behavior to smoke marijuana," he says. ''No one thinks it's bad for them, because all their friends are using it, too."
