The new image of pot heads

There was a time, long ago, back in the ancient world we grew up in, when pot users were stereotyped into freeloaders, obese and greasy, reeking of pizza and cheetos. Faces unshaven, dragging back bong hit after bong hit, watching sesame street and having realizations about their lives.

Not anymore.

14-time Olympic champion Michael Phelps has, hopefully, shattered the global media's representation of pot and shown the world what pot users have known for years: Anyone and everyone can be a pot smoker.

After all, if a marijuana user can win 14 gold medals, what else can potheads do beside grow pot?

Search hard enough and you will find pot smokers in every field of society. Athletics, Education, Government, Policing, Military, Lawyers, Space travel, Rescue Operations, Manufacturing, Retail, the list is ongoing.

Most pot smokers are wise enough to not smoke pot on the job, but their recreation has always been their own business and is enjoyed as such.

It's high time we realized that drugs (and alcohol is included in that definition) and various mind altering chemicals have always and always will be a part of society. Digs have shown that the first crops to be regularly harvested could have been used to make alcohol, the first piece of writing known is an egyptian papyrus made of hemp (ie cannibis, marijuana, ganja, etc.)

Why, pray tell, would you go from travelling from place to place, learning to co-exist with a variety of exotic animals, following the good weather and sunshine, as well as the abundant food, not having a huge family to care for and generally being free, trading and meeting different people as you go -- to being forced to stick to a plot of land to ensure a crop grows, having huge families of whiney kids and having to fend off people off the previous persuasion who are trying to steal your hard worked for crops?

Agriculture is regarded as the birth of civilization for a reason; after agriculture, people became linked to the land they tended; prior to agriculture people lived in small populations and travelled around with the good weather, following the big herds they harvested for their meat, furs, etc.

Indeed, almost every collapse of society known usually begins with a large drought, which is what makes the environmental changes currently taking place somewhat alarming.

The key point here remains, people did not settle down and become farmers until they had a solid incentive to do it. Food wasn't an issue, you followed the herds and the environment had stablized since the ice age by that point anyway; water, same thing, you followed the river flows. Sex was abundant, you raised as many children as you needed and most cultures probably possessed an indepth knowedge of herbs they'd encounter depending on where they were.

The only logical reason people stopped living a lifestyle like this was so they could grow their drugs.

Addiction is a powerful thing, so powerful that it may be responsible for civilization.

Excavations of the pyramid builders (that being, the thousands of willing, paid egyptian labourers that built the massive buildings) show that they were supplied with a near-infinite amount of beer for their efforts. Afghanistan was one of the earliest lands of agriculture, it is theorized to be the original garden of eden, in fact, and is the opium capital of the planet. Coincedence? Probably not.

Similarly, Greek Olympians and Olympic watchers were completely fine with potions, ointments, enemas and so forth that were said to give bursts of strength and muscle. Ancient mystics, alchemists and apothecaries alike produced potions to stimulate and build athletes, selling ancient varieties of modern steroids, uppers and amphetamines.

The Inca empire spanned the Andes, a mountain range, and covered an area the from Vancouver to Whitehorse without horses or locomotives. Messengers ran from city to city, every day serving the function of trucks and trains in our modern empire. How? Chewing the coca leaf, an ingredient in modern cocaine.

Tobacco has formed a link to the spiritual world for numerous North American native tribes for several millenia.

What was shocking to some was silly to most.

So an olympian is a pot head.

Join the club.