What would happen if everyone, from world leaders to stay-at-home moms, tried weed? Cannabis might function less as escapism and more as a tool for empathy, introspection, and slowing down an increasingly hyperproductive world. The real danger may not be getting high, but remaining trapped inside a version of “normality” built on stress, ego, and endless acceleration.
In the highly recommended documentary Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie, amidst the haze of a life devoted to civil disobedience and the noble task of undermining sobriety, Cheech and Chong utter a line that lingers in the air for several beats: “Cannabis should be mandatory.” Laughter ripples through the theater, and at first, that line feels like a classic joke, one of those stoner hyperboles meant to elicit a chuckle. And that’s it… right?
The echo of that statement reverberates far beyond the laugh. And one only needs to look at the current state of the world, in weeks marked by bombings, geopolitical tensions, migration conflicts, and events that spit in the face of what was once “civilization” and is now a glimpse of madness. That proposal, uttered from the mouth of the classic stoner stereotype, stops looking like a delusion and starts to sound like a coherent public policy. We always say it, even without fear of being canceled: exaggeration rules, but here, we’re probably right. “Cannabis should be mandatory.” Let’s run with that idea.
The “normie” world, that ecosystem of cynical burnouts, stress ulcers, and neurotic productivity, has historically vilified cannabis through a mix of fear and an unfounded moral superiority. They sold us the stigma of the lazy, good-for-nothing stoner, as a cautionary tale. “Look at that, don’t become that. Just in case, cannabis is bad, very bad.” And what the established world hasn’t …
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Author: Hernán Panessi / High Times
