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Three ex-police officers smoke marijuana, give reasons for legalising drug and why it is 'not a gateway' to harder substances

Cut, the company behind ‘Grandmas smokingweed for the first time,’ made the video for 420

Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith
Wednesday 22 April 2015 11:07 BST
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Three ex-police officers getting stoned and talking about it
Three ex-police officers getting stoned and talking about it (YouTube )

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Three ex-policemen have been filmed stating they believe marijuana should be used for medical reasons and should be legalised as a way to make the drug safer, while smoking the substance and carrying out field sobriety tests.

In a film created by Cut.com for 4/20, the annual day of rallies, concerts and trade shows across the US and UK aiming to celebrate weed culture and call for the drug’s decriminalisation, the ex-Cops are seen smoking and inhaling the drug while discussing their personal and professional experiences of it.

“I believe it should be legal, I believe it should be more widely available for medical reasons… it’s like the last piece of prohibition,” an ex-police officer said.

“The real good reason for legalising marijuana is that – I mean some of the stuff you can buy on the street now, you don’t know what it’s cut with. So you really don’t know what’s going to happen to you, [but if] you’ve got a quality product, you know what is, where it came from and what it’s going to do to you,” another said.

The former officers were filmed in the US state of Washington, where the recreational use of marijuana has been legalised.

While discussing their professional experiences of dealing with the drug as an illegal substance - “I never arrested someone for it but I took a lot of pot away from people,” one recalls; and also their personal experiences: “The first time I smoked I was 14-years-old, I got caught so it kind of put the kibosh on that for a while,” another adds, the ex-officers also performed field sobriety tests in the studio before and after smoking.

One of them appeared to perform the heel-to-toe walking test slightly better when stoned than when sober.

Where the ex-officers’ opinions became divided was over the argument of whether marijuana is a “gateway drug” or not.

“I think it certainly can be a gateway drug, yes,” one said, while another responded: “If you look at it, everyone who’s a heroin addict started out drinking milk.”

“So you’re saying milk’s a gateway drug?” the interviewer asks.

“Apparently. I mean that’s the argument about marijuana and I’m not sure that’s true,” he said.

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