Suddenly, millions of Americans have something in common with Michael Bloomberg and his awkward little problem with marijuana.

The mayor of New York once said he smoked marijuana and enjoyed it. Now that quote is running in full-page ads for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Bloomberg can't take back what he said, but he won't flat-out support legalizing pot. Thus, in his inability to form a coherent opinion, he speaks for a lot of us.

Most people either have smoked pot or known someone who has, and although both sides of the pot war say the issue is simple, it isn't. While most pot heads I've known are now doing well, and even gained perspective from the drug, a few others are dead or ruined because of harder drugs, marijuana having been their jumping off point.

Still don't feel conflicted? Consider this: A study at Carlton University in Ottawa, Canada, measured the intelligence of 70 kids at ages 9 to 12, before they smoked pot, and again at ages 17-20, after some of them had. According to results published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, people who smoked more than five joints a week did indeed lose I.Q. points over that period – an average of 4.1, though they gained them back if they stopped smoking for awhile. Meanwhile, nonusers gained 2.6 points.

But people who smoked marijuana only occasionally gained 5.8.

My own evolution with the drug is fairly typical. In college, many people in my dormitory firmly regarded marijuana as their major. It was promoted as a workable alternative to reality, at a time when we needed one – the reality in the dormitories being that everything in your room smelled like urine, up to and including the phone.

But often, the only thing that heavy users graduated to was harder drugs. And though it could be interesting to talk to someone who used marijuana occasionally, it wasn't interesting to chat with someone who was on crack:

“What are you doing in my house?”

“We were chillin. Illin'. And fillin'. Like, fill in. Like, I'm filling in.” Laughs at his own brilliant hystericalness.

“You're in my living room in the middle of the night kicking an empty Coke bottle.”

“It's a Hubbah Bubbah bottle, see?” Snickers at his own dry witticism. Then eats his own foot. No reason.

And have you ever talked to a heroin addict?

“Hey, what's going on?”

Uninterested. “Oh, just hangin'.”

“Uh huh. Did you read in the paper, they're going to declare penguins to be a human life form? Isn't that something?”

Uninterested. “Yeah. Pretty interesting.”

Pause.

“Say, it's the funniest thing. But someone stole my CD player.”

Suddenly very interested and concerned. “Really?! When did that happen?”

“Tuesday. Broke in my house. Knew right where to look.”

I know you stole my CD player. I'm looking right at you knowing you stole my CD player. You're looking back at me knowing that I know.

“Wow. That's terrible. I'll keep an eye out for it.”

“Thanks. Would ya?”

So now, society stands at the other side of the argument. Once again, marijuana is supposed to be a simple matter – but in the opposite way that it was in college. Homes can be seized if it's merely found there. People are being evicted from public housing because their children and grandchildren are caught with it – mandating the sort of control over our kids that is usually reserved for Marines or Norman Bates. This is nuts.

But it's hard for Bloomberg to call this a complicated issue – to say that marijuana is not like other drugs; that while legalizing it would open a can of worms, keeping it illegal opens another. Suddenly, Bloomberg would have hundreds of people attacking him – people whose friendship he needs if he's going to accomplish anything as mayor. And that's the final irony – why a politician such as Bloomberg cannot state the truth in all its complexity:

Peer pressure.