Once upon a time, there was a dealer. The dealer was not only a distributor of illegal drugs, he was also a user of same. This dealer however just sold marijuana, in a state where the drug was illegal. He was a nice enough sort, easygoing in the clichéd manner that people imagine potheads are. In fact, when they thought about it, most of his customers would swear they had never seen him angry.
But a select few of his clientele had seen him angry. In fact, those few, after witnessing his blow-ups, realized that his constant, uninterrupted use of marijuana probably had an unintended purpose: yes, it was getting & keeping him really high, but it also appeared to keep a magnificent lid on a terrifying anger problem.
Why did the dealer get mad with only these few of his customers? It was because of one word.
Notice that he was referred to in the first paragraph above as a "distributor of illegal drugs." He would not refer to himself in that way. It's because he did not think of marijuana as a drug.
But if marijuana were not a drug, what was it? He had a ready answer for that: "It's natural," he would say. "It's found in nature."
If you were to casually refer to him as a "drug dealer," the drug dealer would flip out. "It's not a drug!" he would scream.
Most folks - because they wanted their drug in the form of the marijuana being sold - would simply recoil, unaware they'd made a faux pas, though used to the legendary sensitivity of drug dealers, & say, "Sorry, man, I didn't mean it!"
But one time, a younger man, a new customer, perhaps, one who had actually grown up with an older brother with a bad temper, & the mother he inherited it from, this person didn't react in the same way. He saw it for what it was: a weird, irrational, defensive freak-out. After the dealer had screamed his piece, his eyes bulging out, his mouth open, his face an unusual shade of red, this customer calmly took out his phone, punched something into it, & then read out loud, "The marijuana plant contains the mind-altering chemical delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is a drug."
The dealer, unused to being gainsaid or challenged in any way, said, "That - that doesn't make it a drug, a chemical name."
The customer punched some more things into his phone & said, "Drug, noun. A medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body."
The dealer just stood there, looking quite confused.
The customer turned to go.
"Wh-where are you going?" the dealer said.
"I know what you're going to say," the customer said. "I grew up with people who fly off the handle. You're just going to tell me to get the fuck out."
"But," said the dealer somewhat plaintively, "don't you want your pot?"
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