Cannabis consumption persists as a confusing and fiercely debated topic.

We have the people who benefit from cannabis use on one side of the fence and the people who don’t on the other side of the fence. The fence between them prevents them from seeing each other eye to eye. This metaphorical fence is our inability to understand the vast complexity of neurobiology and adequate cannabis use.

What perhaps could help both parties see each other eye to eye is a set of glasses that can penetrate the fence. So, let’s talk about glasses.

Glasses

While writing this article, my eyes are looking at the screen through a pair of short-sighted glasses. Without these glasses, the words on my screen would be as blurry as the rest of the world appears to my vision-lacking eyes.

Thankfully, my parents took me to an eye doctor when I was younger, who determined that I needed glasses because I couldn’t read certain lines of random letters on a wall in front of me.

Since then, I had glasses, which allowed me to navigate my life with more ease than tumbling through a blurry world.

It was a quick yet impactful fix to a major problem that will persist throughout my entire life because vision is not something that fixes itself.

People with & without glasses

I know many people who have glasses. In fact, you’ll find people with glasses on the entire social ladder. Lack of vision seems like a common theme.

But not everyone wears glasses. Some people don’t need glasses, and that’s crazy. They perceive reality as sharp as it is, driving cars and reading books and signs and other tiny or distant things without a problem, while we glass-wearers would be very incompetent at those tasks without looking through our tailored lenses.

On the flip side, if we were to put glasses on the folks with pristine vision, they would suddenly perceive the world like us, blurry and distorted, but with an extra layer of dizziness.

Some people need glasses, and some people don’t. It seems like society is generally fine with that. There’s no fence between the people with glasses and the ones without. We’re simply okay with that. No glasses need to be banned, and no one needs to be forced to wear glasses because if you need them, you’ll simply want to wear them, and everyone would be fine with that because we generally want each other to function well.

Why is it that way with glasses but not with cannabis?

The glasses of cannabis

See, one thing we don’t seem to fully get is that the people who mostly need cannabis are people who have some sort of chronic issue that can be treated by enhancing one’s neurobiology. Like glasses that treat your faulty vision while you wear them.

This doesn’t mean cannabis has no value outside medical contexts, but its risks and benefits shift dramatically depending on the nervous system using it.

Just as you’re unable to point out a short-sighted person without their glasses, you’re also unable to point out a medical cannabis consumer without their cannabis. You can’t really comprehend what the world must look like to a person with limited eyesight*, just as you can’t get what the world must be like for a medical cannabis consumer.

You can guess, yes, but life isn’t a guessing game; it’s about what is real and true for each individual.

For some individuals, it’s a part of life that they can’t see right without their prescription glasses, while for others, it’s a part of their life that they can’t function properly without consuming medical cannabis.

And just like the well-sighted people shouldn’t keep wearing glasses to avoid blurry sight and dizziness, so should the people who don’t have chronic problems to treat stay away from consuming too much cannabis.

Sure, it can be fun to have your perception changed and see everything blurry for a little while, but it’s not sustainable to keep living your life like that, just as it wouldn’t be sustainable to keep putting on a pair of glasses to decrease your otherwise pristine eyesight.

Keep wearing your new glasses

I love this glasses analogy because it’s so relatable for me as someone who’s wearing glasses, and I think it will also be relatable to the rest of the world as well, given that glasses have just become such a normal thing in our society, and that is precisely where we should take cannabis use as well.

We need to tear down the fence of opposing perceptions and instead accept and support each other as we are. With or without glasses. With or without cannabis.

Because the problem was never the glasses. The problem was insisting that everyone is supposed to see the same way.

So start wearing your new cannabis glasses to see through the fence.

Support the people who need cannabis so that they feel less alienated, and support the people who don’t need cannabis to gain a deeper understanding of for whom cannabis is and isn’t.

Once the fence is down, we shall realize that we’re not opposing forces but we’re actually just neighbours.

*Side-note: I have a friend who has red-green colour blindness, and I absolutely can’t wrap my head around what my life would be like if I’d perceive reality as he does.