So here we are, on the threshhold of making “recreational” marijuana legal in Massachusetts, which some see as an overdue victory for the freedom to make a personal choice.

But isn’t that what cigarette smokers do whenever they ignite a Lucky Strike? Yet our government views them as pariahs, ostensibly because our lawmakers care so much for our well-being.

Please. Let’s get serious.

Adjectives such as “recreational” for certain drugs are handy for beating down resistance to behavioral decisions because they convey subliminal approval.

Like “social” drinking or “casual” sex, “recreational” marijuana is not that big a deal to those who want to believe everything ought to be OK; they simply don’t want to be told “no” by anyone for anything.

Marijuana, they’d have you believe, is as nonthreatening as a stick of gum, totally ignoring the experiences of ravaged addicts whose journey down a dark road began with that first toke of what they will tell you was a gateway drug, beckoning them to horrors lurking just around the corner.

A former Beanpot hockey star who restored his reputation and marriage after finally beating the bottle ended up having surgery.

“They shot me full of Demerol and morphine,” he would later recall. “Then they sent me home with Percocets for the pain. No one said, ‘Don’t give him that; he’s an alcoholic,’ and the doctors never asked. So I said nothing, figuring I was safe since I had lost the obsession to drink.

“The next thing I knew I was chewing my booze and here I am.”

That was several years ago and today he’s still living on the streets.

Percocets are not marijuana, yet the important message of that story is that you don’t know what door you might be opening when you take that first puff.

Recreation? Or hell on earth? Massachusetts is saying, “Take your chance.”

A late-night visitor to an emergency room created a stir when the admitting nurse asked if he used “recreational” drugs?

“How can you use that term?” he asked. “It’s like even the hospital is saying it’s no big deal.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” she replied. “But a doctor has to know everything that’s in a patient’s system so we word it this way to remove any resistance to giving a truthful answer. Any drug, including marijuana, could have a devastating effect if the doctor didn’t know about it.”

That doesn’t sound very “recreational,” does it?

These are not apocryphal stories.

Indeed, there are many more just like them, all bearing witness to the inexcusable mistake Massachusetts is making.