I found the comments on what is normal in a given society or group versus another really compelling as I’ve experienced bits and pieces of this throughout my life. I was raised in a homogenous, mostly white town in Upstate New York for my entire life.  I had very few real life cultural experiences, save for a handful of trips abroad. When I went to Italy, I learned that families often eat dinner late in the night, anywhere from 8-10pm, which shocked me. In America, at least where I come from, dinner is usually at 6:30pm sharp. Why would they eat dinner that later? But an Italian could just as soon ask me “why do you eat dinner so early?” it’s all cultural norms. I turn up my nose and laugh at the amount of young people I meet who don’t have drivers licenses, but realize that many people- especially those in larger cities- don’t need one due to widely available mass transportation (which I never have had), or it its too prohibitively expensive for them to own a car. I come from a wealthier family, so that was something I never really had to sit and think about too hard about.

I think the insights on the war on drugs were fascinating and accurate. However I do have a personal critique on the comments about drug scheduling. I fully understand that the policies against marijuana and drugs in general are steeped in racism and continue to be to this day. But regarding marijuana’s scheduling in the drug schedules I don’t have the world’s largest problem with it. I am pro recreational marijuana, to the fullest extent. But when critically analyzing the drug scheduling, understanding that drugs are scheduled in potential for abuse, harm, and understood medical use, Marijuana seems to be almost accurately placed. While marijuana is most likely the least harmful drug in schedule I and was certainly placed there so it laws could be enforced harder on it- in a manner targeting minority communities- the rest of it’s scheduling (when taken objectively) makes sense. When the scheduling was created there was no accepted medical use for marijuana, and it is a drug that is extremely commonly used, meaning taking those two alone it should be placed in schedule I. There hasn’t been a medical community wide consensus on the actual medicinal benefits of marijuana since (although there are some), so i feel conflicted about it. I feel it should be moved down a schedule, to schedule II, acknowledging its potential for medicinal use and the fact that it is not as harmful as schedule I drugs. But it should stay there, recognizing it is a widely used drug that is not by any means harmless. Simply my opinion, but if we are to make marijuana legal it needs to be acknowledged that- like alcohol and tobacco- it is not a harmless plant that many make it out to be.