A sureshot way of convincing your friends, in a few easy steps:

(1) Don't act like a complete moron when you're high. This is a massive challenge for people. If you've smoked weed awhile, you know that the experience can be channeled in, essentially, one of three directions:

(a) Silly, goofy, laughing at everything. There is a time and a place for this, but it isn't around critics of marijuana.

(b) Zoned out and stupid. There may be a place for this too, but it's a way of wasting time and serves no particular purpose. Occasional smokers often let this happen to them. Unless you've really overestimated your ability to maintain, there's no reason for this to happen. I get annoyed when I smoke weed with someone and all they want to do is sit around and do nothing. But that's me.

(c) Whimsical, creative, thoughtful. The best way to be, in my opinion. Create art, come up with compelling ideas for things to do. Hiking is a great one. Make music. Propose truly interesting topics of conversation; posit interesting hypotheticals which will intrigue the straights.

(2) Do not be a waste of life. Do not fail out of school, lose your job, crash your car, start listening to shitty music, or do any one of the 30 or so stereotypical things they portray in anti-drug commercials. Succeed. Make some cash. Develop yourself. Get in shape. Expand your horizons. Build your skills. And then be smug about your pot smoking.

(3) Go into a public place with said friends, turn on your charm, and use it to *get laid*. Watch your straight friends sit in stunned silence as you mack.

I have found that nothing really reduces people more to stunned silence than the ability of people to employ a specific method or procedure for the purposes of procuring sex.

Doesn't really leave people too many places to go with their criticism. Just don't like, accidentally wind up fucking, say, Karl Rove.

That would be rather nasty and would not in any way help our cause.