Cheech and Chong would have no career in 2025

Is this the future we fought for?

Every corner of New York City smells like marijuana.

I am in my living room right now and it stinks of weed. The windows are closed. Some weeks ago I was on the Whitestone Bridge in the rain and the car smelled like weed. To be clear, we were not smoking. It’s the city. The entire city is clouded and choking. It’s a lost cause.

I am, of course, in support of the decriminalization of marijuana. What I am against is how the pot-smoking members of our society have interpreted this as a command to blaze nonstop and in public. “Pretend it’s a city,” a wise woman once said. It’s hopeless.

Why these people can’t do it inside their own apartments is beyond me. (Or chew the gummies, which is better for your lungs anyway.) But they do it everywhere, on the avenues and streets, wherever I’m going, that’s where they go. They’re there. They’re everywhere. They’re the THC Tom Joads.

Not long ago my wife and I were dining at a lovely Thai restaurant. The door was open. A man sat near the window, on a little bench, with an enormous blunt. The server closed the door. It wasn’t enough; his smoke permeated the entire place.

I went outside and said “hey, man, you mind taking that down the block a little?”

He asked me if I worked there. I said I did not not. He said he was waiting for food he had ordered to take home. I noted that there was an empty bench near a bus shelter close by, and I urged him move there. He said he would not. I informed that he was an asshole. He told me to shut up. I cried to the city: “Asshole! Asshole! Here he is, folks, look no further, before you sits John Q. Asshole.” (I did in fact say this, loudly.)

He ignored me.

Sure. With laws against marijuana consumption removed, he had a right to sit there in front of the Thai restaurant and ruin the taste of my succulent meal (which actually was too fatty anyway; not going back there.) But that doesn’t mean he had to. He was going home to eat his food anyway. He couldn’t wait five minutes to fry his brain cells? Reality is that horrible that he has to fight the clarity of cognition now now now? What an asshole.

Anyway, everyone in New York City is stoned all the time. Even one of my best friends, a marijuana advocate who is quite find of cannabis and was once even arrested for firing up his “one-hitter” in the East Village 25+ years ago, confessed to me recently that “there’s too much weed everywhere.”

And this is the true tragedy. With everyone blitzed all the time, “stoner culture” doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just life. There is nothing revolutionary about getting high. There’s nothing dangerous about it. There’s nothing funny. Manic, squirrelly Cheech Marin and far-out fzreekazoid Tommy Chong do not exist in this world. Your accountant, your plumber, your dental hygienist — they’re all getting high. None of them are freaks, they are just people.

And when something is this mainstream, it’s ruined. Laser Floyd means nothing. Lava lamps and spin art are a thing of the past. The Allman Brothers Band are Lynyrd Skynyrd. (May God forgive me for saying that, I’m just trying to make an example.)

Anyway, the rug’s been pulled out from underneath it all — and we’re still stuck with the stench. We can only hope that marijuana becomes so commonplace that it becomes rebellious not to smoke it. Then maybe we can return to a time when something like this is relevant again: