There is always so much debate over this, and I’ll just contribute my opinions, good and bad.

Marijuana is famed for being the gateway drug, the drug of corruption, the one you get peer pressured to toke up and have some fun.

In truth, it really depends on your own personal view of drugs and your own perceptions of life. It’s very true that there are many people who try pot and become psychologically addicted to the feeling of euphoria and blissful uncaring feeling. But these are the people who are looking for an escape from their lives, and this is not the way to experiment with drugs of this nature.

The way to look at it is merely an experiment; a new way to see and hear and taste and feel the world. I mean, the way I see it, I’m only sixteen! I have time to have fun, and when better to do it than with my best friends in high school? I personally will not smoke a cigarette, or even consider doing any hard drugs past marijuana.

But for a couple hours every few months, I am totally willing to be completely stupid and teenager-like. I mean, what stories will you have if you never do anything exciting or ridiculously dumb when you’re a teenager anyway? I never smoke pot more than this; it’s not worth it, really.

Because pot can destroy your lungs, and seriously affect your memory. Too much can very much wreck your life. I know people who smoke two bowls of marijuana a day; they can’t remember a conversation we had just last week. It is not worth it. And I have friends who only want to drink or get high when they hang out, and those are not friendships. They are corrupted and pathetic when it gets to that point, when you can’t be sober to hang out with your own friends.

But in moderation, weed can give you new ways of looking at life for a few hours, and some fun stories, and good times with friends.

I mean, sitting in your friend’s bed, laughing over good music, and thinking you can hear rhinoceros outside her bedroom door, and not being able to articulate why you think that night time is the absolute best time for eating Junior Mints.

You don’t always have to just say no. Just make sure you’re not being dumb when you say yes.