I reported yesterday on the Israeli research on THC and PTSD. TIME Magazine has a post written by the wonderful Maia Szalavitz covering the study. The post itself is fantastic, but I don’t know if Ms. Szalavitz or an editor came up with this awful headline:
Dude, Where’s My Trauma? Marijuana Could Treat PTSD
I’ve got friends who are Vietnam and Gulf War vets who suffer to this day with PTSD. But they are a whole lot better off here in Oregon. While Oregon doesn’t recognize PTSD as a qualifying condition for a medical marijuana card, these fellows have plenty of chronic pain from injury to qualify for a card. To a man they tell me they just could not go out in public and function without it.
I also read day after day so many news stories and so many pot-pun headlines that I’ve become sick of them. So maybe I’m the wrong guy to judge; what do you think?
TIME's headline: "Dude, Where's My Trauma? Marijuana Could Treat PTSD"
- It's offensive. Jokes like this should not be tolerated by serious news organizations (47%, 107 Votes)
- Lighten up. It's just a joke and if it helps get the word out, fine. (34%, 79 Votes)
- I don't really care. (19%, 43 Votes)
Total Voters: 229
Loading ...This is the comment I left for TIME:
Congratulations, TIME, you’re my 2009 Winner for the NORML Daily Audio Stash Worst Pot-Pun Headline of the Year. An Ashton Kutcher stoner movie reference to preface a medical miracle that far too many Vietnam vets already realize and far too many Iraq and Afghanistan vets are denied now. You narrowly eked out a win over:
KTVU San Francisco: “Puff Puff Tax” (coverage of Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s historic cannabis legalization bill in California.)
Kansas City Star: “A tiny Joplin, Mo., suburb has rolled itself a fat one” (coverage of the town passing a symbolic medical marijuana ordinance.)
The Oregonian: “Sex-for-marijuana sting in Tigard goes to pot” (coverage of police using Craigslist to lure guys into prostitution busts with girls in singles ads who will “party” for “420″.)
Willamette Week: “High-Jacked” (coverage of a rural 53-year-old medical cannabis patient in Oregon who was threatened at gunpoint and beaten with a golf club in a home invasion robbery attempt.)
Willamette Week had won last year for “Working Spliffs”, its coverage of attempts by business and law enforcement lobbyists to deny medical marijuana patients the right to work.
Seriously, the article is great, but the pot-pun headlines have got to go. The prohibition of cannabis is a serious issue, but the media continue to frame it with ridiculous double entendrés that would be completely forbidden if the topic were women, gays, race, or religion, to name a few. It is bad enough that the constraints of headlines force editors to use “pot” instead of “cannabis” and search engine optimization dictates the use of “marijuana” if there’s enough room for “cannabis”.
Medical miracles in cancer, pain, spasticity, and other treatments are being denied, even the research into them is being denied, because of the prohibition of cannabis. Supermajorities of people in every part of the country support medical access to cannabis. Yet the politicians lag behind the people, partly because they don’t take it seriously or fear ridicule in the media.
Treat the issue with more respect, please.
Russ Belville
NORML Outreach Coordinator
Host – NORML Daily Audio Stash podcast
See I was thinking Dude Where’s my Car was about these two guy who partied too hard and usually because you’re so drunk you forget where you parked your car.
Although I agree that this cause should be taken more seriously, the fact that puns are used don’t distract the meaning of the article unless they are used in a misleading way.
This pun that you showed had no uh relevance to the movie, unless they were thinking ashton kutcher suffered from PTSD then they really need to get their facts straight.
I’d say use the puns but use them wisely.
Saying oh prop 19 is up in smoke, is quite funny and does bring attention to the reader.
Fuck them. They could never understand. My friends are dead!
Really? The one-line synopsis at IMDB says “Two potheads wake up from a night of partying and can’t remember where they parked their car.” Seemed clearly a stoner movie to me, even if marijuana is never shown.
It has been a long while but I don’t recall a single marijuana reference in that movie at all. Werent they just the pop culture version of Bill and Ted? Or Wayne and Garth?
What is the connection with this one? Anyone who uses the term “Dude” is somehow a marijuana user?
I don’t get the Joke, I guess.
Zoltan!
My stomach turned the moment I saw this headline. When individual morons are heartless it’s tolerable, but know that many, MANY people had to type it, read it, review it, proofread it, and proofread it again before it was published. It’s not one crass idiot. It’s a very large pool of YES (wo)men who’d rather keep their jobs than their dignity and self-respect.
Have we become a nation of despicable social Darwinians, laughing and gloating our way to the top of the “heap” knowing there are broken bones crunching under our feet? Remember 9/11 and the World Trade Centers, anyone? That “heap” once was the envy of the world.
Brave volunteers and innocent workers, students and locals are just now finally being diagnosed with PTSD, years after marriages fell apart, jobs were lost, lives were ruined. But Wall Street had to keep turning profits and so…
Oh, I forgot. I’m supposed to get over it.
I’ll get over it when every one of those pigs responsible for trivializing other peoples’ experiences will suffer as much as those with PTSD.
May they live in hell on earth until they become aware IN THE VERY CORE OF THEIR BONES that they have lost their humanity. If pain and suffering is what it will take to make them human, so be it.
The headline is disgusting. My friend is finishing his 2nd tour in Iraq soon. Between tours when he was home, he would sleep with a pistol under his bed because he was so used to sleeping with his rifle by his bed that he couldn’t sleep with out a firearm of some sort nearby. He also would wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, and screaming. We ask so much of the military, too much in my opinion. They get back and in general they are treated like shit,It is not a fucking joke. PTSD is not a fucking joke, just like asking young people to kill, or potentially get killed is not a joke. Israel has been treating soldiers with cannabis for PTSD for sometime now I believe? But in the USA? So what if they served our country honorably because they did what they were ORDERED to do, fuck um they got to be put in jail! YES WE NEED MORE MILITARY VETS IN JAIL WTF!?! Time thinks it is funny because they are ignorant to the fact that this happens more than a normal Joe Six Pack would believe probably. Sorry for the rant, but I have had my brother or friends in Iraq or Afghanistan for the past 4 years, and I am sick and tired of this BS.
Prohibition does not work. People that use Cannabis are not necessarily criminals. Free the plant already!