Daily Dose of English 124
Weed
Daily Dose of English 124
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. In this episode, oh wait, hang on, I'm glad you could make it today. I don't just say that. I am glad that you could be here today to listen to this episode, whether you're listening to it on the day that it comes out or you're listening to it a year in the future. Whenever that is, I'm glad that you're here learning English with me because it's fun. Anyways, in this episode, we're going to be talking about weed or marijuana, the devil's lettuce. Lots of different names for it. And I'm sure that your language has even more because it's something that's really quite old and has been around for a while. But I wanna talk a little bit about weed, which is the most common name for it in the US. Like if you're just talking with somebody, it's the standard. I just named for it. Like yes, it is technically slang, but people that are only being like official are going to say marijuana. And so yeah. And so first, I wanted to clarify that where I'm from in Oregon, it is legal. It is fully legalized. There are weed stores all over the place. They are regulated, they're taxed, and it is very, it's quite normal. And in fact, it actually brings a lot of tax revenue to the state of Oregon, which is, and a lot of that goes right into schools. I'm not exactly how it gets spent, but it is pretty common. Let's, I wanna talk about the legal status of it in, oh shoot, I'm doing something with my computer though, so I can't look at internet. Well, whatever, it's fine. Oh, wait, that was easy. It did load. So in a lot of the states of the US, it is not legal. There is in 38 states, it is legal for medical use. And then in, I think, 22, I just lost the number, 22 or 24 states, it is fully legalized for recreational and medicinal purposes. So recreational is for recreation, for fun, basically. So anybody can do it if they want. It's a thing for fun. In those 38 states where it's legal for, it's legal for, oh shoot, medicinal purposes, that's for medicine, so for people that have a medical reason to want or to need it. Um, there's also a bunch of places where it's decriminalized, um, where it's like, if you have it or you, you're not really going to get in trouble. Um, so there's a couple of states like Idaho, or sorry, not Idaho, um, decriminalized is like in, uh, I'm looking at a map, but it doesn't have names. So like Florida or, uh, North Carolina, let's see how well I know my, my U.S. Well, that'd be a fun episode, U.S. geography. um anyways but if you look at a map you'll see there's two parts that are mostly legal which is the west coast primarily and the east the sort of new england the upper east side there's also some states where it's only uh cbd is legal which is a derivative like comes from the plant but it is not the plant entirely so states like texas and um georgia illinois I'm okay with this. No, that's not Illinois though, that's, oh God, what's that state? Milwaukee, Minnesota, no. Milwaukee's a state. What am I talking about? No, Milwaukee's a city. Milwaukee is in the state of, oh God, I'm losing my mind. That, it doesn't matter, I'm sorry, I'm getting off track. And then there are a couple of states where it is fully illegal. It is still a completely illegal substance as illegal as something like cocaine. And that's in, it only looks like there's four states where it's fully illegal, which is good. We're making progress. But anyways, I'm here to talk about weed being legal in Oregon, which is, it's been like that for quite a while. Oregon was one of the first states to do it. And so it's very common to see dispensaries, which is the places where you buy weed, on the street. And you can just walk in, you have to be 18 or older, 21 or older. I don't know, actually. I think it depends on the state, but I feel like it's 18. And then you can go in and you can buy it. It is still pretty strict, right? So if you go into a dispensary, you have to show ID every single time, right? To buy alcohol, you don't have to do that. Actually, when I turned 21, which is the legal drinking age in the US, I went to buy some booze at a liquor store and they didn't ask for my ID. I do look older, but technically you're supposed to ask, but with weed, they always ask. It's like even if you look like you're 45, you're like, yeah, I just want to make sure you have your ID with you, is sort of the thing. And by the way, a lot of places do the always check ID in the US for alcohol as well. And it's primarily so that they check that you have your ID. Because if somebody comes in to like check the place, be like, all right, everybody show their IDs, and you don't have your ID, even if you are of legal age, the store can get in trouble or whatever. So they just are really careful because they don't wanna get their licenses revoked or whatever. Anyways, I'm getting off track. I wanted to talk a little bit about the, the, I guess the culture of weed in the U.S. because I think it's quite different from a lot of places, especially in Oregon, where it's not only legal, but it's also pretty common. And it's, it's very, it's very common for younger people to, to have used it. At my high school when I was there, it was pretty much everybody had at least tried it or been around it or been offered it or whatever. It's just, it's super common. It's not really something that's seen as a big problem or anything like that. And so, especially for high schoolers, it's pretty... I think it was more common than drinking in high school, which in a lot of states is totally the opposite. I think it's probably better though because Like I'd rather a child, or not a child, but yeah, a child really, a 14 year old have smoked some weed rather than like be drunk, because you definitely have a lot more potential for harm, especially to other people when drunk, since weed often just makes you laugh a lot or sleepy. I do enjoy a bit of weed, I will say. Um, and I think the biggest thing is the, so the social aspect, cause it is a pretty social thing. A lot of people that smoke do it with others or like sort of like with alcohol as well. Right. It can be, it's really great for connecting with other people, loosening yourself up a bit and having a good time. And I think that's the main thing that I. that I like is that it feels like it removes the brakes. So if you think of yourself as like a vehicle with an accelerator and a brake, like in a car, so you can drive forward or you can stop the vehicle, our brains have these accelerators and brakes. And weed can often get rid of the brakes. It doesn't necessarily push on the gas, which I think alcohol does. Alcohol pushes on the gas. It makes you do more things that you might not otherwise do. But it feels like weed gets rid of barriers that are maybe preventing you from doing things that you want to do. And so I think that's the key difference. So let's say A common example is like somebody is afraid of asking somebody out on a date, right? There's somebody that you really like and you want to ask them out. Weed would make you be able to do that, but alcohol might make you want to ask somebody out who you normally wouldn't want to. It's not in your head, you don't secretly want to, it's this new thought that you've had that you do when you're drunk. And so that's why I think it's I think it's better, in general, the effect produced from alcohol, or from weed, sorry, than with alcohol, just because it's a little, it's not as aggressive. It's not that it's the wrong word, but that's sort of what I think about it. I don't really know what else to add. There's not a whole ton to talk about. I don't use it a ton. I don't have strong opinions on it really. I think it would be fun to grow just because it's a plant that has, it's a little bit, it's sort of like growing food but for a very different thing. And I think that'd be really satisfying to grow some and just see what that process is like because you can make your own alcohol. I've done that before with essentially like some light wine, but I think it's just not, it's not as, I mean, it's pretty cool actually, nevermind. So like, it's the same thing of like making your own alcohol, whether it's moonshine or wine or, you know, Kind of anything, right, with spirits or beer can be really cool. But so I think it's the same sort of thing as like growing your own plants. However, like there's that different vibe of like you're growing a plant rather than like going through a chemical process that does include like live bacteria, but I don't know. Anyways, that is my episode on weed, which might sound a bit weird to some of you from very different countries, right? I know that some countries like Japan, it's very illegal and it's super not allowed. And so if you're from a country like that, I'm very curious. Write down in the comments, what are the kind of laws that you have in your country or your state or your city even? Are you somebody that uses weed or do you find that it helps you learn English better? Or is it completely illegal in your state, or you're where you are and you've never tried, or you never don't want to? I'd be curious to know your thoughts and opinions. But that's all that I have for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a little bit of something. Maybe. But that's all from me. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye!
For email updates, subscribe to my blog via email or RSS feed.