Once upon a time, pot was the enemy. It had no place in mainstream society. It took ambitious young people and turned them into basement dwelling slackers who were likely to become meth addicts.

But times are changing. Now everyone wants to live the high life.

This past Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos played each other in the Super Bowl. As the only two states that have legalized recreational use of marijuana, the teams were the butt of many ‘bowl’ jokes.

It’s a coincidental situation, but it’s also an indicator that mainstream opinion is shifting. We’re not just accepting pot, we’re embracing it. But how did it end up in such high regard?

Gradual legalization has led to gradual social acceptance.

According to a Jan. 30 BuzzFeed article, marijuana is decriminalized in 15 states, medically legal in 20 and recreationally legal in two. The remaining 24 states haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, but with a recent presidential seal of unofficial approval, they’re bound to eventually.

When we were younger, we all knew being a “pothead” got you nowhere. Now we are told that marijuana stimulates the economy, helps our health and reduces crime.

The change in opinion is a complete 180. Instead of PSAs featuring pot-smoking high school dropouts, we have stories of how marijuana is lighting up the economy.

A Jan. 22 Slate article reported the booming business opportunities in Denver from marijuana legalization. Ean Seeb, co-founder of the Denver Relief marijuana consulting company, said in the article, “You can relate it back to the gold rush. For every chunk of gold, you needed picks and shovels, a pan and a sifter, and the same thing applies to cannabis.”

Modern gold is green, and the new message for our generation is that it creates thousands of new job possibilities, helping rather than hindering our economic future.

As for health benefits, hospitals are prescribing medical marijuana to treat illnesses from epilepsy to depression. This is a more than slight variation from the previous perception of weed as a brain-damaging gateway drug.

Closer to home, New York state is projected to become the next state to fully legalize recreational use, according to a Jan. 6 Huffington Post article.

In 2013, the state assembly passed a decriminalization law and a medical marijuana law for patients who are seriously ill. According to the article, the laws were modeled after Colorado’s cannabis laws and although there hasn’t recently been a progression toward full legalization, decriminalization and medical marijuana show budding progress.

Because New York leads the United States in marijuana arrests, legalization would allow more time to be spent stopping violent crime.

That being said, the success of legalization is still in its beta phase. The government is closely watching Colorado and Washington to see if recreational legalization will have a negative effect.

There are still many criticisms that say promotion of any type of drug, even if it’s legal, sends a bad message to future generations.

There are benefits to legalizing marijuana which makes it socially acceptable, but after the green-gold rush peters out and legal marijuana becomes normal, the next question is clear: will it be characterized as a medical drug or popular recreational vice?

Kate Beckman is a freshman magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at kebeckma@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @Kate_Beckman.

Published on February 4, 2014 at 2:10 am