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Who Thought This One Up?
By Dan Greenman

Tuesday, December 10

There is a commercial on television in which two teenagers are sitting around smoking marijuana. One of the boys shows a gun to the other, who thinks it's cool, and asks if it's loaded. The boy holding the gun says it isn't and then accidentally shoots the other boy. The ad is trying to say that marijuana use is responsible for poor judgment and results in deaths. I want to know how many people are actually killed each year because of marijuana. It's nowhere near the number of people who are killed from alcohol-related accidents, yet there are about 75 beer commercials during every football game on television. Furthermore, what sense does it make to blame marijuana for gun use? Guns are to blame for gun use. If we were to get rid of all of the pot in the world, people would still get shot all the time. Yet if we took away all of the guns, nobody would ever get shot again.

Email Dan dgreenm1@ithaca.edu