While I never inhaled, I may have eaten a few brownies

Weed was legalized this month, on my birthday no less, and still I’ve never actually partaken of the herb.

Lots of people may not believe that, coming of age in the 1970s I never smoked marijuana, but it’s true that I never did, even if my sister refuses to believe me.

Granted, she probably has every reason not to believe me, based on the crowd I hung out with part of the time in high school. It was present at nearly every party I went to, if not out right in the open, you knew when people left in small groups why they left. If you didn’t there was no mistaking it when they got back to the party.

I don’t recall anyone I was ever with in a car getting busted but I know there were times it could have very easily happened. Most of the people I ran around with were pretty careful about it and wouldn’t have ever wanted to put others in a bad situation.

Nearly every concert I went to until I was 25 had weed being passed around the floor. I would just smile and pass the joint on along. It was the same way at parties and I can say that no one really ever gave me a hard time about passing and I never felt pressured to do it either. The people I hung out with respected the fact that we should all be able to make their own choices.

I’ve always had the same respect for those who do use marijuana, as long as they’re doing it responsibly. I can honestly say I’ve never had a problem with legalizing it. I don’t think it’s going to solve our national debt or cause anyone to become addicted to harder drugs. Like alcohol, it can be abused and that abuse can ruin people and families.

I guess I owe it to my father that I never smoked marijuana and in fact never tried it or cigarettes, not even once. Dad was a cigarette smoker and he coughed and was addicted to tobacco. I didn’t like the way it smelled and I flat out decided I wasn’t going to smoke when I was little. I couldn’t really see as how smoking a joint would be a whole lot if any better for my lungs, so I decided not to do it. Beer was my drug of choice as a teen.

Despite the song about the contact high attributed to hanging out with Willie Nelson supposedly being a myth, I was around it enough as a teen that I would have sworn a contact high (second-hand smoke) was for real. You could say it permeated our culture back then.

While, like Bill Clinton, I never inhaled, I can’t swear that I didn’t consume unknowingly. Yeah, I hung around with and was offered baked goods from a few ladies known to bake really good brownies.

I’m pretty sure you’ll never catch me on the back porch tokin’ on a number but my sweet tooth could be another thing altogether.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]