If you are anything like me, when you heard that Prop 19 wasn’t voted into action over in California you thought to yourselves, “Ah well, that’s probably a good thing,” and continued updating your Loyola University-specific contingency plan for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. To those of you who were not updating their contingency plans and think that the zombie apocalypse is a dumb idea that will never happen, I would like to say that you have been factored into the “Escape” phase of my plan and I thank you for your selfless contributions on the behalf of the rest of us.

But I digress.

Those who are from California, or have friends from California, or were just reeeaaallly interested in the California area up until Prop 19 failed, are probably appalled at my apparent disregard for their now-destroyed post-Nov. 2 plans.

They may say I’m being too uptight about the whole issue. Some may even say that calling the failure of Prop 19 anything but a fiasco is just my way of trying to get Loyola administrators to believe that I have never engaged in the ingestion of the illicit material in question.

To these accusations, my only response is that it is no one’s business what I do before getting together with friends and giggling incessantly at “The Dark Crystal” while eating an entire box of cereal and hoping the cops don’t show up. You should also feel silly for thinking that any Loyola administrators have time to read my column.

However, the main reason that Prop 19 supporters should feel the same that I do is that the failure of this particular bill may actually help convince the other states to start putting similar decriminalization bills on their state ballots in the future. As everyone knows, California is to the other states what that evil, bunny thing is to Donnie Darko. California is always off to the left, doing crazy stuff and whispering that the rest of us should join in.

And just like Donnie Darko, we tend to think that these suggestions are fantastic ideas. This becomes a problem when we actually want something from our state legislators, who tend to play things safe by assuming that the people they govern are complete idiots who don’t know what’s best for them. Such a viewpoint is good for handling legal crap that we don’t care about, but is very bad if we want to decriminalize marijuana.

Thus, when California residents outvoted Prop 19, they showed the rest of us that even they think that there should be a limit to how freely they should distribute the Devil’s Lettuce, an action that I believe will be taken by our legislators as a sign that perhaps there is something to this “medical use only” idea. If Prop 19’s fate in particular doesn’t move them, then California’s savings that will come as a result of their current policy should raise some eyebrows.

So, dear readers, there is a light at the end of this woefully smoke-free tunnel. California may not be the Americanized Amsterdam some of us were hoping for, but the results of Prop 19 may show that Californians are not just crazed dope-fiends and incite change in our states yet. And even if they-

…whoa, is that the cops outside?

Chad Carlile can be reached at [email protected]