Or something like that.
That’s what Vrye Weekblad carelessly pronounced this week, in a fine example of pseudo-journalism. It painted a picture of the NWU campus as a seedy 1920s-style drug den, filled with unspeakable horrors. Which we know it isn’t. NWU has a reputation for producing world-class graduates and the students are the community’s children.
Potchefstroomers reacted on social media. Homelessness, pregnancy, global warming – it seemed from some comments that every world problem started with marijuana.
It would be pointless to show them scientific articles on its curative properties – they won’t want to hear. Satan’s weed will have no place alongside their habit-forming anti-depressants or the Ritalin which mom and dad steal from their conveniently diagnosed ADHD children. More than one adult of my acquaintance has hijacked this cocaine-resembling amphetamine to help them get through a demanding patch at work.
Anyone who has a grandmother in a local retirement home will tell you how many of the old ducks are sailing painlessly through their arthritis, thanks to some great dagga products. There’s a busy market behind the scenes. Why?
Groot Ouma will tell you that it was freely grown and used as medicine back in the day when life was slow, sweet and uncomplicated.
If anything, the people I’ve met who are regular dope smokers are a laid-back bunch. They’re kind, they’re funny and they’re a lot more pleasant to deal with than brandy-glugging rugby watchers on any given winter Saturday.
Ask Marius*, a local farmer. He never meant to try the stuff. But when he walked into the kitchen this week and saw some special fresh Brownies from a kind neighbour on the kitchen table, he liked them so much he ate them all. He slept that weekend. And he giggled. A lot. Then he ate his mother-in-law’s entire cream cake and half the farm pantry.
Don’t be the miserable person shouting against a therapeutic plant that has been legalised, until you’ve walked on the wild side. The grass may be greener there.
*Name obviously changed.
