Pot smoker lives the ‘high life’
One student tells when and why she smokes marijuana.

By Sarah Chacko
Skiff Staff

She’s here on a full ride. Her cumulative average is a 3.78. She’s on the Dean’s Honor List, and she’s active in the Honors Program.

Hard to believe she smokes pot everyday.

“Delilah,” a TCU student who would rather keep her identity and major confidential, has been smoking for six years, but she’s hardly the “typical” pothead.

“It’s not that hard to keep my working life, my recreational life and my academic life separate,” she said. “I’ve never had trouble saying no to smoking out to get something done.”

Delilah started smoking her freshman year in high school, her first year in a public school. She said it was the exposure to different people that opened her mind to try new things. She smoked for the first time with a friend and just kept smoking. Despite her new found habit, Delilah remained in the top 10 of her 300-student class. She graduated as salutatorian of her class.

“Mind you, this is after four years of smoking pot,” she said. “Habitually.”

By the time Delilah started college, she was smoking everyday. As a first-semester freshman, she said she smoked once in awhile — at parties and around certain friends. Her smoking habit increased during her second semester to everyday; at least twice and at most 4 or 5 “sessions.”

Delilah said she currently smokes everyday, but sometimes as little as just before bed. She said she knows when to smoke and when not to, “like when I have a lot to do.” Marijuana is just what she does to relax.

“People think smoking pot makes you lazy,” she said. “There are people who don’t smoke that are lazy and pathetic. I don’t knock people who sit in front of the TV for hours.”

Though her parents don’t know, Delilah said she’s never given them any reason for concern.

“They know I make choices of my own that they don’t know about,” she said. “I haven’t screwed up my life, and I’m doing pretty well.”

Delilah said there are a lot of stoners who add to the stereotype, but said there is just as diverse a range of characters and personalities as among the “normal.” People that smoke pot are typically considered hippies, which carries a negative connotation, she said. They don’t seem to be a working part of a decent society.

However, Delilah has a job and is making the grades.

“What kind of people do they want in this decent society?” she asked.

The “truth” that the government advertises through anti-drug campaigns is more like propaganda, Delilah said.

“How much truth was there to those ads?” she said. “They make you think what they want you to think.

“Just because the law makes it the wrong decision, that doesn’t mean it inherently is the wrong decision,” she said. “Remember kids, it’s only illegal ’cause the government can’t tax it.”

Delilah said smokers shouldn’t be considered society’s pariahs.

“It’s easier to find bad than good,” she said. “In all social types.”