Pot. Weed, marijuana, Cannabis, a doobie, grass. Whatever you call it, it seems taboo. After reading Going Bovine, it seems to be the only thing that makes this book challenged. Which raises the question "what's wrong with pot?"
The book address pot to be normality. The main character, Cameron, seems to smoke pot constantly. So why isn't it a normality? Fourteen percent of all people in the United States smoke it. Yet when people think of pot they think "filthy hobo hippy". So Mrs. Cunningham, if you do the math, in each class, about 3 kids should smoke pot. Can you find three "filthy hobo hippies" in the class? In fact the main character, Cameron, isn't a "filthy hobo hippy". Aside from the fact that pot doesn't magically turn you into a hippy, the only health concern is risk of premature childbirth. Even if you argue that premature childbirth is horrible, what smoking tar and nicotine is better? Why are we shielding our kids from this? The only reason pot was illegalized was because a fascist Congress wanted to crush flower power. Is telling kids not to read Going Bovine better than a federal government crushing a culture?
Of course the other side can make some good arguments. Cameron sometimes skips class to go smoke pot and uses it as an escape hatch from reality. When he goes to visit his dad at the university he talks about how"[he] could use a doobie". Which makes me think about the root of Cameron's problems. Are they related to pot? Maybe it would be hard for a kid to go through what Cameron's going through and reading this will have a kid winding up with these problems. So banning it would be the good choice to take it off of the shelves.
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