Pot Head? It's Good for You Now!

There is this one cookie that you can buy at Trader Joe's that is utterly addictive. They are so thin and crispy, PLUS they are made of very simple and "good" ingredients: wheat flour, sugar, butter, almonds, salt and sodium bicarbonate. I am eating them right now. It's hard to stop.
But that is not what I wanted to write about today.
As many of you know, Washington State along with Colorado passed new laws that make private possession of marijuana legal. This has been a controversial issue around the country, but now that the law has changed here in Washington, I have not read any articles, claiming that there are down-sides to the new legal status of pot.
(These cookies are really outstanding!)
As most of you have read, smoking marijuana has well-documented effects on its users. They tend to be calmed and maybe a little lazy. Their senses are heightened, I hear, and they develop a strong interest in eating. This is called "the munchies". People who have smoked weed claim that music becomes more interesting, and many also assert that their conversations end up more stimulating as well. Articles about this have appeared periodically over the years.
When we were in college, however, none of these "features" was regarded as a particularly good thing in society, unless you were selling tortilla chips and salsa, in which case the increased sales might have been a positive development.
(Wow... half the package already?! I better put them away to save them for another time!)
Recent research, however, is starting to show that the active ingredient in weed may actually promote the growth of neurons in the brain! Drinking wine or other alcoholic beverages is well-known to inhibit neuron growth, and in fact, we often talk about how drinking can "kill off your grey cells". It's clearly not good for you at all.
In addition, just getting older might be responsible for neuron reduction which contributes to us older folk having what we laughingly call "senior moments".
Ha ha!
(OK... just ONE more cookie! I will go for a walk later and "burn them off"!)
So just imagine the health benefits of avoiding that "two-martini lunch" and instead having a couple of tokes of weed! Or at the end of a hard day, instead of kicking back with that six-pack of beer which will definitely render you stupid, you could "top up" your neurons with a few hits off that old bong you have lying around nostalgically from your college days.
(OMG, I finished the whole box! I will take my walk over to Trader Joe's later!)
While it is only Washington State and Colorado which have these liberalized laws about marijuana so far, once the positive brain effects become better known, we can expect legal changes to sweep the nation!
Everyone will be smoking weed and maybe our nation's SAT scores (which have remained stagnant) will start to rise again. Perhaps even the Republicans in Congress will sharpen up and figure out a way to conduct the nation's business without lurching from crisis to crisis. The lurching is clearly being caused by booze! They need to stop inhibiting their neurons and instead start working on increasing them.
(Trader Joe's 72% Dark Chocolate from Belgium is also really good. Luckily I have a couple of bars right here! They melt in your mouth so sensuously! Yum!)
Oh! And while I am talking about chocolate, did you know that chocolate is good for you? Yes, it is! This means that eating chocolate (as I am right now) is a healthful activity! We can call it Choco-Therapy.
What was I talking about before?
Oh! Right... the benefits to the brain of weed.
I would like to continue writing about that, but I need to head out to Trader Joe's to get more cookies, and – actually – some chips and salsa sound pretty good too!