Caroline O'Donoghue: Four reasons to legalise weed in Ireland
Caroline O'Donoghue: I don’t understand a society where whisky is legal but marijuana isn’t
At this stage in the game, I don’t understand why they don’t just legalise weed. Seriously.
The more I think about it, the more marijuana seems like the solution to most of the Government’s problems.
You want people to stay at home? Here’s a substance that makes you want to curl up under a blanket and watch old episodes.
Trying to curtail a mental health crisis? Here — this is something that everyone in California is using to treat their anxiety, insomnia and depression.
Worried about the economy? The Irish are a nation so prone to novelty spending that we have managed to put a donut shop on every street and they all seem to thrive. If we’re willing to part with €5 for rapidly staling pastry, then can you imagine what business a weed dispensary would do?
Plainly, I don’t understand a society where whisky is legal but marijuana isn’t. At this point, I think we’ve all had the Friday night tantrum. Where, at about 10 o’clock, your valiant struggles to differentiate the week from the weekend by pouring a double measure of gin has devolved into you sulking on the couch, clutching a crystal tumbler in your hand like Norma Desmond, shouting about how you were once considered a great beauty. “How about we have a disco…. In the living room!” you plea to the person living with you. You are the under-stimulated, over-excited toddler that just wants to draw on the wall with lipstick. This cannot be good for society. Please, let’s just give everyone a bong.
The more I think about this, the clearer it is to me that the knock-on effects for society would be brilliant. Allow me to take you through it.
A return to Village Shoppe culture. In the US, I’m told that weed dispensaries are at big shiny buildings, like iPhone stores, where neatly trimmed young men recommend you weed gummies with the sage reverence of a monk. In Amsterdam, it’s more of a cafe culture, where you are supposed to sit around, drink coffee, and start another Enlightenment. It seems every culture brings its own unique spin on its weed dealing, and so it only makes sense that Ireland comes into the game with old school siopadóireacht energy. You walk into your local weed dispensary and it’s basically a Maeve Binchy novel. There’s a large counter, an old woman behind the till, and everything is brown. She tuts fondly as she recommends her wares: “Are you the youngest Murphy fella? And is your brother Pat still in America? I remember Pat coming in here for his lolly when he was your age, ah, lovely blonde head of hair on him, and your lovely mother, always with a smile for you. Now pet, are you looking for a mellow high or more of a buzz?”
It will radically change the artist’s community. Ireland has a huge supply of artists, writers, actors, and musicians. Many of them are hugely talented. Many of them are not. Introducing weed to a society will help sort the wheat from the chaff: the really talented people will make even better art, and the mediocre people won’t bother at all. Think of the hours this will save the poor people in the grant office.
A few years ago, it was extremely easy to download illegal movies, and everyone did it. Every man I knew had a hard drive full of glitchy, out-of-sync, illegally-sourced movies that were horrible to watch. Then two things happened: one, it became much harder to do, because internet providers cracked down on it. Two, it became much easier to just pay for a movie through your TV. So now hardly anyone downloads illegal movies, and movie-watching in general has become a better experience. The same theory could be applied to weed. The stinky weed of everyone’s youth, dealt by troubled teenage boys, and responsible for horrible fits of paranoia? It could be replaced by a streamlined, more comfortable, higher quality service. The Netflix of narcotics.
Most of all, I think bringing a weed culture into Ireland will likely restore a sense of silliness that is sorely lacking. We’ve gone very serious altogether: serious books, serious television, serious news bleeding out of our serious ears. Gloomy tote bag clutching, eternal doomsday watching, endless blithering on about how the only news is that there’s no news because we’re not allowed to do anything. Lord, what I wouldn’t do for someone stoned to wander up to me in the street, telling me how the inside lining of their coat is so soft and that they’re so lucky to have it. Get everyone stoned, already. Prioritise it like the vaccine: the elderly and the infirm first, because they need the biggest laugh, then the teachers, whose nerves must be shot. Then, the chronically dull. The boring people who can’t stop talking about the R number and the different ways society will never recover. We simply must give them something new to talk about.
* Caroline O'Donoghue is a Cork-born writer living in London. She is the author of and
